


Sundered Faith

by elfhawk3



Series: Sundered Faith [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Fantasy, Gen, NaNoWriMo, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-05
Updated: 2013-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 55,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfhawk3/pseuds/elfhawk3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for NaNoWriMo 2010.  All things related to this story (be it research, art, or works I haven't posted here yet) are helpfully collected on one reference page over on <a href="http://sundiver.dreamwidth.org/89295.html">dreamwidth</a>.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for NaNoWriMo 2010. All things related to this story (be it research, art, or works I haven't posted here yet) are helpfully collected on one reference page over on [dreamwidth](http://sundiver.dreamwidth.org/89295.html).

The catacombs underneath the main temple of Jadus in Khorevail were cool, damp, and lifeless. Once a week, one luckless squire was sent to inventory the dark vaults. Once a month, one of the elder priests wandered through to ensure nothing had broken free. There were no bodies held there; worshipers of the sun god started their final voyage on a funerary pyre. 

Instead, the ancient catacombs held the spoils of centuries of battles against dark forces. Possessed swords, dark altars steeped in sacrifice, cursed dice. What the priests could not cleanse upon arrival, they cataloged and stored away for later purification. Some items were later brought up out of the dark vaults for one of the questing knights to use, but only in the direst of circumstances. Only the darkest magic could withstand the power of the sun god’s priests’ cleansing spells. No one wanted to chance one of the cursed items waking out of the stasis the priests had managed to place them in.

Tonight it was not one of the young squires making his way through the maze-like structure. Instead, it was two scruffy men in ill-fitting clothes meant for a higher class than theirs. They walked with the soft careful steps of men used to walking on more unstable surfaces than the smooth stone underfoot.

“Two more hallways on the left,” said the one man, “and then it’s the next opening on right.”

“We ain’t getting paid enough to anger the Jadens,” said the other. “And if'n we're going to be, I says once we nab the trinket the broad wants, we helps ourselves to a tip on the Jadens’ tab. Nothing flashy-like though.”

“They don’t keep money in the cats, Jakes, you dim-wit. Jadens got a proper treasury for that. They keep the bad magic down here. And the less we touch, the better. What’s say you ask her for a raise once we’ve returned to her with her bauble?”

“We’ve passed up some shiny swag, Martin,” Jakes complained. “And I hate creepin’ about in cats. Give me an honest roof job any time.”

“Not so honest,” said the taller Martin with a harsh laugh, taking a right. Jakes laughed with him.

The vault they had arrived at was mostly bare. A necklace made of interlocking gold discs lay on a shelf next to a jewel-encrusted helm. The helm still had bloodstain splatters on it; giving one the impression the previous owner had lost his head over the matter. On the shelf below it was an ornate wooden box with the sigil of the goddess Khory carved into it. Heavy metal bars kept the lid sealed tightly down, and the box pulsed slightly as whatever was inside it breathed. A small black blood-encrusted altar sat almost in the center of the room, its narrow base barely visible beneath its wide flat top. Embedded in it was a long, wicked-looking kris. On another wall sat a low shelf littered with potion vials and two large tomes leaning towards each other for balance. A cat’s skull glared blindly towards them from its resting place between the tomes.

“One gold disc necklace, right where she said it would be,” said Martin smugly. “You still got the fake she gave you?”

The other man pulled a similar necklace out of one of his pockets. “Reckon I’ve got to place it right where t’other one is?”

“As close as possible, Jakes. Don’t want nothing to look out of place, and they walk by everything regular-like. Someone might remember the necklace not hanging off the side of the shelf the last time they went by.”

Jakes carefully replaced the necklace. “Weight’s a mite off,” he said.

“Can’t be helped. No one’s touched the thing in decades, and nobody's so dull as to write a paper saying its proper heft. The Jadens don’t fondle the goods, anyhow. Just eyeball it and run a spell-sweeper. That’s the important part. And the lady says she’s a soft-hand at copying the look of the spells the original has. Could be years afore anyone notices the swap.”

“And then it’ll be her problem, not ours,” agreed Jakes, pausing next to the altar. “I say we gets out of here double-quick. No telling when her magic wears off and people start noticin’ us again.”

Martin exited the vault and began retracing his route. “Keep up, Jakes. You’re right about not wanting to be near Jadens when the spell drops. They might recognize our faces from the sheets the guards pass around.”

Jakes quickly followed him, stashing the necklace in a pocket and slipping a long wavy-bladed knife into a belt loop.

Inside the vault, the empty blood-stained altar’s narrow base started sinking into the ground with a low rumbling groan.

\----

It was a small dark room, the dim light coming in from the gap between the door and floor only highlighting the deep shadows in it. The walls in the closet had closed in around him days ago and he was too tired to keep up the panic he had fallen into at first. There was only hunger and the question of when they would come to kill him.

It was his own fault really. He had gotten lazy in his research, assuming the truth in the story of the duel between the two men. He knew that even tracing it to first-hand accounts wouldn't always give him all the information. Both parties involved were thought to have died in the duel. He had assumed Elias' identity, claiming to have been left near death, which was why it had taken so long to return to the abbey. He should have investigated the site of the battle. Then he would have discovered that Drust had survived, though he had been as soundly beaten as he had claimed Elias to be.

As it was, Drust had finally managed to drag himself back to the abbey, only to discover a man he knew to have died at his very hands was there. That had resulted in a nasty fistfight, and ended with him in a closet-cum-prison and the monks outside discussing what to do with the interloper. Not directly outside the door, of course. Better suspense through silence. But he knew they were discussing it. They couldn't afford to keep him- not when they had no idea who he really was or why he had come. But killing him had its own problems- what if he had been hired by someone who was expecting him back? What if they sent more people looking?

He hoped someone else would come to check out the reports of missing children in the area. The monks hadn't been particularly subtle in their choices- poor beggar children were only thought of when they were present, never in their absence. But visitors might note the complete lack of homeless in the area and track it back to the abbey like he had done. Of course, if one of the missing boys hadn't been the seven-year-old runaway son of a local noble family, he would not have had much reason to investigate. Countess Celestina was very vocal about her missing son, and very free with her money for someone to find proof of what had happened to him.

Too bad the boy hadn't lived two days after arriving in the abbey, or he could have just been in and out, rather than arriving to discover the boy already dead and strange workings afoot. Then it stopped being a quick job for a bit of spending money and became a proper job he would have to send a report in about when he managed to find a way to stop things. The Crusaders would be displeased by the madness that had fallen upon their clergymen, but if he straightened up the problem here, they wouldn’t take the bad news out on him. The sun worshippers were a cranky hidebound lot, but their jobs paid well and were rarely boring.

It was eerily dark and silent in the little storage closet, with only a mop and bucket for company. And the deep shadows, of course. Those were constant companions, the little leftover bits of the monks' awful sacrifices left to wander the dark abbey halls, hiding from the monks, scared to lose what little was left to their existence. They liked him, if only because the only demand he made of them was to hide from the brothers. It was a terrible way to eke out an afterlife, but he didn’t know how to return them to the Wheel for their respite between lives. He didn’t even know if there was enough of a self left to the things for the Wheel to accept them back.

They were not actually a danger, the shadows, but they made for unsettling company. Yesterday- or so he could only assume, time passed so slowly in the dark, it might have only been hours ago- one had rested on his foot. They were formless and the only reason he had known it was there was because the light should have been hitting his boot. They barely registered as present, but now there were so many crowded into the dusty storeroom that the air felt heavy. He wondered what the monks were doing that would drive the little things to cower in his tiny cell.

He got his reply in soft voices. Not the murmured whispers of the monks, but smooth feminine voices of those who knew a whisper was louder than undertones. The door creaked open and he heard a young, musical voice saying, "Just because it's a linen closet, Carmen, doesn't mean someone hasn't hidden a nice toy from the others in it. This is the office of somebody important, after all. Not to mention the lock."

A small dusky-skinned redhead in a heavy blue cape stood silhouetted in the doorway as he squinted up into the brightness from where he sat. Her face was turned back as she spoke to her companion, and he could see a sharp ear tip sticking out from the muss of her tangled chin-length hair. A short slender line of metal stuck out from one of her boot tops, and a light rapier hung from her kit belt. He watched her tuck something small and shiny into one of the belt's many pockets.

"Oh hello," drawled another voice as a much taller woman appeared behind her. For a moment her sharp features reminded him of someone, but as her face tilted back into the light, the feeling faded. "What've we here? They store the janitor away in the closet as well?"

He gave a short bark of tired laughter as the elf's head whipped around. "I'm not the janitor, duck, but I'll happily clean the floors if you give me something to eat."

The tall woman gave him a cursory look and quickly tossed him something from her belt. As he was mulling it over- was anyone ever really hungry enough to eat trail rations? - she sent the small elf to get someone. "He be too weak to stand," she said as the little redhead frowned at her. "I'll not come to any harm, and the others be nearby."

"Just because they locked him up doesn't necessarily mean they were wrong to," the elf warned before flouncing away.

The woman leaned against the doorframe and looked him over intently. The shadows that had taken cover with him pooled around her feet, crawling up and around them as they investigated the intruder. She shifted her weight and they fled back into the dark recesses of the closet.

He considered her quietly as he ate. Not terribly tall, he thought, just given the illusion of it by her much smaller companion. She was dressed in protective leathers that looked comfortably worn in, and had two sword hilts popping out behind her head, attached to the plain leather baldrics that crisscrossed her chest. Her dark brown hair was pulled back into a long braid and he momentarily wondered if it ever got tangled up in her sheaths. A long hunting knife hung at her hip. Her skin tone was the same burnished gold so common in nearby Valencia, but her accent said otherwise. Sailors spoke that odd multilingual cant, not locals. She made no move to conversation, but silently passed him a half-empty water skin when he finished eating.

The elf returned with three others- two pretty blonde half-elven women who looked related and a tall lovely brunette in a gray gown slit for ease in walking. He pegged the woman in the gown as either a wizard or a sorceress- the ley energies in the room parted quickly for her, and her walking staff could double as a spell focus. The thoughtful gaze spoke of wizardry's study, but there was a liveliness in her eyes more often found in the few users of the spontaneous magic of sorcery. Either way, she was a rare sight in superstitious Sundabar. One of the half-elves was in similar leathers to the woman who had kept him company and had the same unsettled look. Woodswomen, he thought. Those who preferred the wilds always had the same distrustful look when out of view of the sky. He couldn't really blame them; he wasn't one for small spaces either.

The other half-elf stomped in plate mail, a heavy spiked chain hooked across her belt and occasionally clanging into the side of her legs. He winced at the sight, but the young woman didn't seem to notice the problem. She had a round cheery face that was at odds with the looming presence her heavy armor gave her. The armor was etched with subtle warding designs and familiar sun symbols. The silver sun medallion around her neck told him she was a holy woman, but the unpracticed way she walked with her weapon said she was more priestess than knight. It also wasn't the standard sun symbol for the Caldonian pantheon. Combined with the foreign accent the woodswoman had spoken in, he knew they were terribly far from home. Elves were merely uncommon, but the only place on all Caldonia to find a peregrine cleric of their Court was far to the east, in the Free Coast. They had to have arrived at one of the ports there and traveled this way. 

"You must be the intruder they were discussing," said the woman in the gown with an accent similar to that of the other brunette. “The man with a dead man’s face.”

One blonde took up a post with her fellow woodswoman at the room’s entrance, while the other scrunched herself into the closet with him to run knowledgeable fingers across his bruises, taking account of his injuries. It was getting more than a little crowded in this small area. The redhead gave her a scowl, obviously still worried about the threat he could turn into, and he kept himself very still. The knife in her boot looked to be for throwing, and he didn't need any more cuts.

"They were hoping you had starved to death while they dithered over how to get rid of you,” said the half-elf who had joined him. “It left them quite frightened of us when we arrived. They thought we had been sent to check in with you."

"And what wonders could Folken Abbey hold for such lovely ladies as yourselves? I know what brought me here." He couldn't keep from flinching as the woman cleaned the cuts on his face.

"Countess Celestina's son brought you here, I would imagine," the tall woman said, leaning against the door frame to watch the healer work. "I am afraid it was mere curiosity that brought us here. Why did Redbrook become a ghost town after dark? Where were all the poor folk? Why did a tracing spell on the creature that attacked us last night lead here?" 

Waylaying travelers was a tried and true profession for brigands, but the monks clearly didn't have the same instincts or sense of self-preservation, attacking as large and well-armed a group as these women appeared to be.

“And were the answers to your liking, my lady? I can’t say they were to mine.”

“They left a few things unanswered,” she said, shooting a look at the other brunette. And wasn’t that a story there? The woodswoman must not have liked what she found out and dispensed the less cultured, though perhaps more honest, justice of the wilds. Murderers were killed when found standing over their victims, not brought to the authorities. But dead bodies were difficult to question.

No matter how unskilled the monks had been, they still would have outnumbered the five women. And none of them looked worn by the battle they had to have been in. What could have brought such skilled fighters to as quiet a place as Redbrook? For that matter, what had brought them to Caldonia?

The healer had finished cleaning his wounds and was moving her hand slowly through the dark closet. “What is this?” she asked. One of the deep shadows had taken up residence on her hand.

He rose slowly to his feet and helped her to hers. The weight of her armor left him wishing he hadn’t. “Leftovers,” he replied. “Whatever grimoire they found, it didn’t have the most efficient blood magic in it. These are the unused pieces of their unfortunate victims’ souls.”

There was silence. He eased past the woman in the doorway. Her gaze was locked on the dark unnatural shadows in the closet. He couldn’t blame the women their shock. The first time he had caught one of the monks making use of one of the little things, he’d had to find someplace private to throw up his dinner. And then had set up a small charm in his chambers to attract the little things and keep them out of the way of the others. He could think of nothing else to do with the things- his kind didn’t have souls and had no rituals a layman might use to bless them to allow them to move on.

“I should’ve killed them slower,” the woodswoman spoke in a harsh voice. “The blood rite we interrupted was bad enough, but to not even grant what remains a chance to return to the Wheel-“

“I doubt the monks cared very much what happened to their victims, duck,” he interrupted. “And the excess could be used for other things, if they could find them. I took to binding them to my quarters. Nobody notices the shadow under a bed being darker than normal.”

“Is there anything we can do for them?” the healer asked, still where he had left her in the closet, her hands cupped to hold the original visitor. Her feet, he noticed, were completely shadowed and the darkness was creeping slowly up her legs. They were drawn, no doubt, to the soft healing energies she worked with.

“I have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like them before, and I flatter myself that I’m knowledgeable in the darker arts.”

“And why would that be?” the redhead asked from the desk she had staked out. She had pulled out the head abbot’s papers from one of the previously-locked drawers and was quickly flipping through them. Her frown deepened as she paused on one page. “Trying to find a better way to summon the Old Ones?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a researcher,” he scolded. Now all the women had mistrustful looks. Barring the healer, he noticed, who was humming softly to the growing shadows around her. It was rather troubling, the way they flocked to her. Perhaps the clean light of her faith eased them. Priests were in charge of funereal rites and there might be enough awareness left to recognize her as one who could help them. But thinking about that had to come after getting on the women’s good side. Or at least off of the bad one. “I just happen to prefer getting my information first-hand. You might have read my treatise on the cyclical nature of dragon cults?”

“ _Flying in Circles; or how to spot if dragon worshipers have set up an altar next door_? By one Lorist Teilomere?” the brunette asked dryly, one fine eyebrow arched. He had guessed right, then, a sorceress with an education, not a wizard. Wizards were too buried in old grimoires trying to recreate lost spells to read a text concerning dragon cults. The rare practitioners of sorcery were widely assumed to have dragon blood somewhere far back in their ancestry that allowed them their unique way of practicing magic and could not help but read everything about them they came across. “You generalized the cultist mindset too much, and you assume the dragon in question is always young. Some of the older ones use them as well.”

“The majority of the cultists do fall into a certain mindset,” he replied with a shrug. “And while there are wyrms who allow cults to build around them, they’re also far too strong for driving out. And the treatise was meant to be used getting the cultists out before they rooted themselves too deeply into the community. Information on elder dragons would just make readers assume they could banish wyrms as well. And that would just get people killed. So, now that you know who I am, perhaps you ladies could introduce yourselves.”

“I am Odette,” the sorceress said. He wondered if she was the leader of the party, or merely spokeswoman by default. “Your lockpicker is Petra,” she nodded towards the redhead engrossed in one of the papers she had found. “Carmen is the one with all the weaponry and Athena is the pretty blonde.” The half-elf woodswoman wiggled her fingers at him with a bright smile. “Her cousin Tae-Lana is the one who patched you up.” Her eyes finally broke contact to look at the woman still in the closet. “Tae?”

The half-elf had disappeared completely underneath the shadows.

“They are frightened,” Tae said, exiting the closet. The shadows covered her from foot to neck. She had the appearance of a head rising through mist. Her amulet was free of the darkness and glowing a brilliant purple that did not reflect off the shadows surrounding it. She didn't appear to be worried by the strange attraction the shadows had to her. “They do not want to live like this, but they do not want to die either.”

“Want me to smoke those off you?” Petra asked from the desk, barely glancing up from the paperwork. “Because no one wants to die and it’s going to happen anyway.”

“Petra,” Carmen hissed. Athena had moved towards her cousin, only stopping when Tae raised a hand.

“They either die right away or fade until there’s nothing left. They’ve already lost most of their sense of self,” the redhead continued, unmoved. “Survival instincts are the most basic level of existence. They’re no more intelligent than that poor beast we put down last night. They went to Tae because she’s a healer, but there’s no physical hurts there. The only healing she could do would be banishment. Unless she wants to chance an invocation.”

He looked at the redhead in surprise. Lock picking wasn’t the only thing the elf was good at. Her fingertips were sanded for tumbler work, to be certain, but the ease with which her eyes flickered across the head abbot’s papers- papers he knew to be written in an arcane tongue- said her training was in much more than thieves’ skills. And he should have known that, elves had deeper ties than humans to the magical ley lines that wound their intangible way through most everything. Unlike the sorceress, whose movements had left waves in the ley energies, the elven girl barely left ripples. Until she actually cast a spell, her arcane abilities would not be apparent.

“Just because their bodies are gone, doesn’t mean-” Athena started.

“No, she is right,” Odette interrupted. “They are ghosts. Echoes that know they are dead, but too hurt by their deaths and what has happened to them afterwards to want to chance the unknown. Tae,” she turned back to the other blonde. “You must get them off you. They will drain your energies trying to fix themselves, but there is not enough left of them to be remade.”

The healer looked sadly at the shadows swirling tightly around one of her hands, then slowly raised it to grip onto her glowing medallion. The shadows crept off her hand. “You are sure about this?” She looked at Petra, not Odette. He wondered at that- the little elf was a juvenile, while both healer and sorceress were adults. Why would the healer turn to her for advice in this matter? Perhaps she had been educated in a temple. 

The elf raised her head to return Tae’s gaze. “It is the only way to heal what has happened to them.”

Tae closed her eyes and began mouthing a prayer. Concentrating, he could read her lips. She was speaking in Kelathyl, one of the rarer elven tongues, reciting an unfamiliar prayer for the dead. The shadows faded away from her, disappearing as silently as they had existed.

Athena approached her on soft footsteps, placing a steadying hand on the other woman as she swayed slightly. “Are you well, cousin?”

Tae opened her eyes and let her arm drop back to her side. She gave her cousin a small smile, her eyes shining bright with unshed tears. “They were scared and lost here. Now they are free. But, Lorist-”

“Teilomere,” he corrected. “Lorist is my title. Not important though- what did you need?”

She was leaning heavily on her cousin. “They wanted me to thank you for them. For keeping them away from the monks. They did not know what happened to those others, but it must have been a more painful and drawn-out death than their original ones.”

“Closure is nice,” he said. “My thanks for helping them. There was naught I could do for them save hide them.”

“Would you like us to accompany you back to Redbrook?” Odette asked. “And on the way, you can explain to us how you came to wear a dead man’s face.” Her tone was light, but her narrowed eyes were serious. He watched Carmen unfold from her casual lean against the door to stand straight up, hands loose at her side.

“No need for the threat, ladies, I’ll answer all your questions,” he said with a friendly smile. “Good research means having excellent sources, after all. Or at least reliable ones. The short story, though, would be the fact I’m a shapeshifter. The longer story of why I'm specifically wearing Brother Elias' face will have to wait for the walk back to Redbrook so I can inform Countess Celestina about her unfortunate son's demise. I doubt she will be pleased, I know I was looking forward to the bonus of bringing her son back alive.”

“Not just research then, Lorist Teilomere?” Odette questioned archly.

“One has to eat. And for someone such as I in as magic-unfriendly a place as Sundabar, every chance for bonus pay counts.”

“We had not noticed any difficulties,” Tae said with a frown.

“Well of course not, priestess. Your armor carries the symbol of the sun. Your sorceress is considered-” he paused, trying to find the right word for the absolute trust the locals had for their clergyfolk without insulting the sorceress by suggesting she was leashed.

“Tamed?” The little redhead suggested, her head cocked to one side as she studied him.

“Under control,” he finished.

“Lovely,” the sorceress complained.


	2. Giants in the Earth

“Courier duty is even more boring than I thought it would be,” Petra announced with a yawn. “Why did those priests of Jadus hire us to deliver these letters if nothing interesting is going to happen on the journey? A real courier would’ve been faster and cheaper.”

The quintet of women were en route from Khorevail, the capital of Sundabar, to Khoresbar, a small city on the far eastern border of the country whose major claim to fame was it was once the capital of a far larger ancient empire. Sundabar and vast Telubra to its north and east were the only countries to lie entirely within the old empire’s borders, but its ruins dotted most of the Caldonian continent.

“Our destination is likely to be just as dull,” Odette said dryly. “I think the Jadens were worried about something and thought it better to be safe than sorry. Their mesagiers may be able to get across the country in two days, but they carry nothing with which to defend themselves from danger. We are more prepared should anything interesting happen.”

“Interesting? Bah. All of Sundabar be a bore,” said Carmen from her place at the front. She had forgotten one of their first run-ins upon crossing the Sundabar-Valencia border was an abbey committing blood sacrifices. She probably thought it had been on the Valencian side. Free-roaming woodsfolk placed little import on man-made boundary lines. Carmen had a better sense of them than the others Tae had met, since she did not travel with other woodsfolk, but Caldonia was a foreign place for all of them, and the different nations did not interest her enough to remember them. “There be no festivals or strife here. Not even a single blessed brigand to hunt down. We learned that on the walk across it to Khorevail. ‘Tis no vitality to the place.”

“No life, indeed,” Athena agreed. The wood-speaker had been ill at ease since the events in the abbey, always surreptitiously eying the members of the Jaden clergy they met, wondering when the next one would suddenly snap at them.

Tae had not been able to ease her cousin’s fears as well as she would have liked, being of a similar mind herself. As often as they used to take jobs to clear out desecrated temples, they had never before run into crazed priests of a goodly god that could still practice the gifts of their faith. It bothered her more than she cared to admit, and Athena had picked up on it. The others were no more distant with the Jadens than they were with other clergyfolk- Odette friendly and welcoming, Carmen disinterested and short-spoken, and Petra suspicious and a little combative. 

Petra, a follower of the Court’s trickster god, thought very little of believers in militant gods, especially those that spoke only to their clergy as Jadus did. Having true faith, she said, should allow one to get the occasional boon from their god. Else why bother to pray to them? Tae felt the thought was highly unorthodox, perhaps even a little heretical, but Elisar Ibryiil attracted that sort of wild thinker to his small train of jackdaws that passed for followers.

“There was that large earthquake a few weeks ago,” Odette pointed out in a thoughtful tone. “Based on the complaints in the last town, Sundabar is not known for them.”

“Perhaps they have succeeded in irritating one of the earth spirits,” Tae added.

“Probably not something we should joke about,” Carmen said. “Most of the earth spirits don’t have a sense of humor, and the ones that do only like their own.”

“Here’s another question for you,” said Petra. “Why do we never buy horses?”

“I’m the only one of us that knows how to ride,” Athena replied. “Also, Snow scares horses.” The large pale-furred gray wolf trotting along at her side butted his head against her leg, recognizing his name. “And we aren’t making bad time. Not with Odette folding the land for us.”

“Which is the main reason why no one has bothered us,” said the sorceress, pushing her dark locks back out of her face. She was looking haggard after several days of travel. All of the women were used to long walks; they had to be, after trekking from one side of this continent to the other. Even before coming to Caldonia, they had never been ones for idleness. However, Odette was currently spending extra energy folding the ground underneath them to pull them closer to their destination. 

Mantha, her long-legged burrowing owl, had been carefully transferred to Tae’s armored shoulders after his long talons had drawn blood one too many times. Her steps were too uneven for him to balance well and he occasionally hooted his disapproval for the whole matter from his new metal perch. Tae’s sensitive ears were just as put out about the situation as the owl was. He usually flew for these long walks between jobs, but their current method of travel would have left him days behind. 

“When each step we take takes us several kilometres, it is difficult for anyone to get close enough to try to rob us.”

“I rather like it,” Tae said. “It is very peaceful. The Telubrin roads are anything but safe. This is almost a holiday, except for poor Odette. You cannot say you miss wildlife interrupting our sleep.”

“That snake only joined you in your sleep roll for ‘twas cold,” Carmen said grouchily, staring straight ahead at the long road they followed. “’Twasn’t even poisonous. But you be right. ‘Tis a nice break from running for our lives from irate kobolds.”

Tae only wished that last part was hyperbole. That had been an unpleasant experience, for all that Carmen and Crunch had enjoyed themselves greatly.

“It won’t last,” Petra said pessimistically.

\----

Khoresbar, former seat of the Allekhor Empire, was described in texts as a beautifully vibrant city rich in culture, history, and life. Locals and travelers through the area knew better. The buildings still stood tall and mostly unweathered, a testament to the ancient builders, but many stood vacant and in need of repairs. The city had slowly been drying up from the migration of its people west to seaside Khorevail, with its fertile lands and busy port. The land around Khoresbar, farmed for centuries, grew little beyond the hardiest of grain grasses, and food from across the nearby borders of Telubra was even more dry and tasteless than that which the people of Khoresbar managed to grow for themselves. The civil war raging inside the Telubrin borders did not allow for much surplus, either. And so Khoresbar slowly faded, only the most stubborn staying.

When they approached the walls of Khoresbar, though, the women found the gates flung down outside, crumpled and gouged. There was no movement inside, nor sounds of life.

“What could have happened?” Tae said as they approached the open entrance slowly.

“The priests of Jadus could not have expected this.” Odette prodded her staff into one of the mangled doors, Mantha giving a chirp of indignation at the movement. Carmen had stitched one of her leather scraps into Odette’s gown for the owl to grip onto after Tae started complaining about the bruises left by him nipping her ear. The little creature had tired of being away from his mistress and had finally found a way to show his displeasure. Tae was just as relieved to see him go as Odette was to have him back. “Surely there are still people here. Thousands live here, and while my folding spell skips kilometres, we would have still have seen any evacuees in passing.”

Petra slung her bow off her back. It was primarily used to catch game to fill the stewpot, but the sharp-eyed redhead was even deadlier with it than with the rapier she favored. “There’s no such thing as coincidence. Maybe they knew the city had rolled its welcome mat up and wanted to throw some mercenaries at the problem before unleashing their sun-knights.”

“We’re more ‘kill first, ask questions later’ than Jaden sun-knights,” Carmen said skeptically, leading the way into the city. The streets were deserted, litter blowing slowly through them. The silence was stifling. Tae felt dwarfed by the tall stone buildings they passed, hollow shells of what they used to be.

Petra disappeared into one of the alleyways. 

Carmen watched her go. “I doubt they sent us here with the intention to get us killed by whatever has driven the people to either hole up or flee.”

“Perhaps they did not expect this level of abandonment.”

“Odette, nobody expects this level of abandonment,” Athena said. “Mayhap the Jadens caused it.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be talking so loud,” Petra complained, glaring at them as she rejoined them. “Empty cities are great for echoes, and if there is anybody here, I’d like to be able to hear them.”

“So where are we headed?” Athena absentmindedly shoved her wolf out of her way as the beast wound itself about her in worry.

“We are still sworn to deliver the priestess’ message,” Odette reminded her. “The temple of Jadus is on the southern wall. It is perhaps a twenty minute walk.”

“There is someone watching us from that building,” Tae said, pointing up to a moving dark curtain in a second-story window. The other women paused in their trek to peer up at the window.

“She’s not going to have any answers,” Petra dismissed. Before anybody could question her, she pointed to a sign placed in the building’s only ground level window. Even with the wooden boards behind the window, blocking the view in, the symbol was clearly visible. Tae recognized the Sheela na Gig. It was outrageously unrealistic, but also unmistakable. The vulgar figure was one of the old symbols of the fertility goddess. They had gone out of use even before the worship of Astarte had dwindled in favor of Isis, the more acceptable moon goddess. “Only place to see that symbol of Astarte anymore is decorating a house of pleasure. And the girls don’t get out much. Too busy making money for their Sheela, of course. The only thing she could give us is a time line, and that’s really not necessary.”

Athena looked back up to the window. “Why ever would she stay?”

“Nowhere else to go,” Carmen said. “With the brands they put on pleasure girls, even should she leave, she'd not find another profession.”

Petra tried the door. The handle turned easily, but the door didn't move. She gave the door a hard nudge with her shoulder, but it didn't move. “Odd,” she murmured. “She must have moved some furniture to block it off.”

“Perhaps everyone else has barricaded themselves away this way as well,” Carmen suggested.

Athena closed her eyes, a hard look of concentration on her face.

Petra tried another door while they waited. It swung open easily, and she disappeared into the building. Tae couldn't read the sign on the door, but the muffin drawn on the window was understandable enough.

“That worries me,” Odette said. Mantha glided on silent wings after the girl.

“Not many people are left,” Athena said, opening her eyes back up. “I could not give you numbers, but I know the feel of a live city. And this place feels nothing like it.”

Petra reappeared, a handful of small apples in her arms. “Food hasn't even had time to go bad.”

They unburdened her load. It had been weeks since they had had any fresh fruit, even ones that would be as weakly flavored as these poor specimens. 

Carmen sliced hers open quickly. “Whatever happened here could be no more than a week ago,” she said, poking a finger into one slice. “Any longer, and these would have some rot to them. Good thing they're hard apples, or they might already have gone bad.”

Mantha flitted out of the building, a mouse in his clutches.

“Long enough for the mice to discover free food as well,” Tae noted.

“They were more interested in the bakery counter's offerings. I took these out of the kitchen.”

“So if there is no one left in the city, what should we do?” Athena asked between bites of apple.

Odette tapped the message tube tucked into her belt. “Keep pushing on to the temple and hope it still has an occupant or two for us to deliver the messages to-”

“And then get out of here like rats off a sinking ship,” Carmen interrupted. “If we didn’t pass anyone headed back west, they must have headed east to Telubra. And nobody goes there without good reason. We went three weeks out of our way to go around it through Valencia, and we’re armed.”

“They could have headed north,” Athena disagreed. “The Telubrin lowlands are battlefields, yes, but the highlands aren’t. Not yet, at least.”

“They are not settled,” Odette disagreed. “There are barely a handful of squatters. The only difference between the lowlands and the highlands is you can reclaim your kin’s body from the battlefield. The mountains of Telubra do not release their dead.” 

When they had first approached Telubra, almost a year ago, it had been through its eastern neighbor of Erushfold. The locals had been full of stories about the spirits that haunted the ruined northern coast of their large neighbor. Even before the war had broken out, Telubra had been a strange, frightening place to outsiders. What few Erushfolders had money to travel, went south to lively cosmopolitan Valencia, or back east to the Free Coast if they felt adventuresome.

They had advised the women to take the south roads if they were set upon going west to far Sundabar. Worried about travel in a country currently descended into civil war, the women had heartily agreed and lost a month going around it.

“And they couldn’t have gone south, not with the Valencians still upset about their princess. Any Sund refugees would have been turned away,” Carmen said.

“If they weren’t put to the knife,” Petra added. “The ‘Vails don’t care because it’s all the way on the other side of the country, but ‘Barens would rather chance Telubrin warfare than get within any distance of a Valencian border guard. It was a Sund assassin that ended the main royal line.”

“Where do you two even get this information? It was a two month voyage to get here and I know when we left you didn’t know anything about these lands beyond that the Allekhor Empire used to be here.”

“See, Carmen, this is why we stop and eat in pubs. We’ve walked across basically all of Caldonia now, it gave us plenty of time to pick up local news. Well, that’s how I do it anyway. And you must have learned something from the tap room gossip to know the Valencian princess is dead.”

“Do not believe her, Carmen,” Odette said with a laugh. “She has been browsing other people’s correspondence this entire time. I picked up some historical records when we berthed in Biar. I offered to loan them to you. Petra is the only one who took me up on it.”

“She is also the only other one who reads the language here,” Tae interrupted sourly. Petra had spent the months at sea learning Allekheirn, the main language of most of Caldonia, from the sailors. With Petra’s knowledge of magical formulae and genius with tongues and Odette’s skill at casting unusual spells, they had managed to create a spell to give the other women the ability to communicate without knowing the language. Reading it had been another matter entirely. Odette had a personal spell that could translate written things for her, but her attempt at using it on Carmen had left the woodswoman light-blinded for days, though it had also left her with the uncanny ability to see in the dark. They had decided to give up on the problem rather than chance worse things happening.

“Really, Carmen, you barely know the history of your country, why are you making a fuss about not knowing information about countries half a world away? Odette and Petra keep us informed on what we need to know.”

“We’re here,” Petra said, cutting off Carmen’s reply. “And they definitely had a problem.”

The temple of Jadus in Khoresbar was the oldest one known to still stand. And probably the largest. It took up the better portion of an entire city block. It was not as grand as the main one in Khorevail, but it had the splendor of ancient days. The temple stood far above the city on a manmade hill, with long steep steps leading up to it. The building at the top was lined with beautifully carved columns. Its ornate golden roof had to be polished frequently to keep the bright sunlight reflecting off of it for passersby to see and be awed by.

At least until the latest turn of events. The ornate roof had crumbled inwards, lusterless, and the white columns lay broken and strewn about like an angry child’s forgotten toys. Cracks ran down the steps, some stones torn free and lying at its base.

“They either had a hand in it,” Petra said in a smug voice, kicking one of the broken stones down the street, “or they were the focus of it.”

Carmen made a rude noise. “Let’s just see if there’s any way in or if we can return to Khorevail with the happy news.”

“Can I stay here?” Tae asked, eying the tall staircase. She was far from sure-footed, and the lengthy climb in front of them seemed to be tempting fate. “I will just trip halfway up and end up back down here anyway.”

“I’ll stick next to you,” Carmen said, slapping a hand against Tae’s plate-clad back. “I've got a good grip and ‘twould take a serious fall for you to pull me down as well.”

Petra led the way up, bouncing nimbly between gaps in the steps, and then hopping back down to give sly pointers to her slower, clumsier companions. Carmen, usually a good climber, was hindered by her task to keep Tae from tumbling back down the steps when she placed her foot wrong. These missteps, much to both Carmen and Tae’s chagrin, were all too frequent.

“I hope there is a short cut for the way back,” Tae panted when they reached the top.

“Over the side and straight down?” Carmen asked, helping her down into a sitting position. She grinned when Tae rolled her eyes. 

Odette took a seat beside her, pale and tired from the climb and the extended use of magic it had taken to arrive here so quickly. The request for speed was unnecessary in retrospect. Whatever had happened to the city, it was before Khorevail’s priests had hired them. Carmen moved to poke around the collapsed entrance way. Petra disappeared into the maze of collapsed pillars.

“It must have been a beautiful view,” Athena said from where she and her wolf stood at the edge, looking out across the city. She scratched his ears, turning her head slowly to take in a panoramic view. “But it just looks sad now.” She frowned, peering down to the street below, and backed away from the edge, her arms crossed protectively in front of her. “Lifeless.” Tae wondered what it was Athena could feel, to be shaken by it. Or maybe it was the lack of life.

Odette gave a soft sigh. “Quite true, Athena. Night will fall soon. Should we try to make our way inside now or wait until morning when we will be fresher?”

No one wanted to head back down the lengthy stairs to take shelter in one of the city buildings just to repeat the journey in the morning.

“’Twill be safer outside,” said Carmen coming back from the rubble to sit down next to Odette. “’Tis no way to tell how stable the roof is. It could shift and crush us.”

“Who is to say will be any safer out here?” Tae shot back. “We do not know what drove the people away.”

“We sit watch even when we stay in an inn, Tae. Obviously we would do so here as well,” Carmen replied, rolling her eyes. “But ‘tis something odd about what happened to the temple and I’d rather go inside with my eyes wide open than blearily shut from exhaustion.”

“A point,” Odette said. “But see if you can find a large enough overhang for us to crowd under for the night. It would be wise to stay under cover and as much out of sight as possible.”

“There’s a side entrance to the far back that looks to still be mostly clear,” said Petra as she made her way back to where the others sat. “Maybe even cleared by someone, I couldn’t tell for certain. Any decision about sleeping arrangements?”

“Outside and under cover. Just in case it rains. Or whatever happened here turns out to be a flying monster with boulders in its grasp,” Carmen told her. The redhead grinned as Odette gently swatted Carmen’s arm.

“’Tis something in the ground beneath us,” Athena said suddenly, breaking the introspective silence she had fallen into while the others argued. “I dislike the feeling it leaves me with.”

The women exchanged frowns.

“Not much we can do about it now that we’re here,” Petra said after a short silence.

\----

Early in Carmen’s watch signs of life began to show in the city below. There was nothing lit within the city, but she could see large hunchbacked shadows moving in the streets in the soft light of the moon. She quietly pointed them out to Petra, who had finished her evening meditations and was flicking through a heavy spellbook while waiting for Carmen’s watch to end and hers to begin. Carmen did not think the elf was actually reading it.

“Are those what I think they are?” Petra asked, squinting. The creatures had likely been moving all night, but Carmen was the only one with the vision to see clearly in the darkness. Of late it seemed to have been sharpening even further. She wasn’t certain if she should mention it to Odette. The sorceress had been horrified at the accident that was the origin of the ability.

“Trolls? Be likely,” she replied. “Would explain somewhat why the citizens cleared out of here. I’ve not seen this many in one place before. The only reason their numbers keep in check be the clan wars, since the only thing what could kill a troll be another one.”

“There’s other ways. They’re just a lot harder,” Petra pointed out. “The wars are because the tunnels are overcrowded, though. They’ll have this whole city to spread out through.”

“How did they get here, though? They’re creatures of the underground. Or mountains, you sometimes see trolls there. This be plains land, though. 'Tis nothing larger than a hill until over the northern border into Telubra,” the woodswoman said as she squinted northwards to where mountains were barely visible low on the horizon.

“You don’t suppose that earthquake they were complaining about back in Ressin opened something up here? Doesn’t really explain why the temple has been destroyed, though.”

“Could still be an angry dragon armed with boulders.” She pantomimed one swooping down from above.

“We’ll find out in the morning,” Petra said, looking back down to stare at her spellbook.

\----

“Trolls?” Athena repeated, scrunching up her nose. After packing up their small camp and completing their morning stretches at Carmen’s insistence, they had crowded in together to converse in low whispers, too disturbed to speak in the normal tones they had used the day before. “They’re creatures of the underground.”

“I think the earthquake broke something open,” Petra said, idly placing small rocks into a pile. She had used a broken piece of a fluted column as a miniature staircase up the pile. “There are caverns that come close to the surface, after all.”

Odette shook her head, placing a shiny rock on top of Petra’s model. “It was not just the underground breaking upwards, I think. Consider how high this temple is. The building itself is not particularly large. The true temple must be inside this man-made hill.”

Mantha chattered questioningly.

“More than likely,” Odette answered. “The more nooks and crannies the exterior of a building has, the higher the chances of birds building nests. But I doubt there are any owls.”

“I will never get used to that,” Carmen said, brushing a gloved finger softly down the owl’s back where he perched on Odette’s shoulder. It was the major difference between Athena’s bond with Snow and Odette’s bond with Mantha. As clever as Snow was, it was only what intelligence an animal might achieve. Feelings traveled across their bond easier than words. Mantha, on the other hand, understood perfectly the words people spoke, so long as Odette knew the language. Carmen had never asked if Mantha could still communicate with owls, or if that was one of the things he had lost in becoming Odette’s familiar. “Too used to woodsfolk bondmates, I guess.”

Mantha ruffled his feathers, sliding out from under her finger. He chattered into Odette’s ear again.

“Nothing underground for you to investigate either.”

“That may not be so,” Tae said. She set her fingers on the stone ground near the base of the model. “If they needed all this room, who is to say they did not go deeper as well?”

“How are they getting out onto the streets, if ‘tis not from the temple entrance up here?” Athena asked. “Is there another entrance on the ground level they’re getting through?” She took out of one the rocks on the bottom, tossing it lightly away.

“Seems likely,” answered Carmen, who had woken again before dawn, letting her watch the trolls converge back on the ground level of the temple. By the time the sun had finished rising, they had disappeared back into wherever they had come from. She hadn’t heard any noises coming from underneath them, but that could just be the several layers of stone required to hold the weight of the visible temple building.

“Should we all head down to look for it, or let Petra do the legwork since she would have been the one to find the entrance anyway?” Tae asked, eying the stairs with distaste.

Petra hopped up to her feet, giving Carmen a toothy grin as she stood as well. “Probably best to save your energy until we know for certain we can get in down there. You could check out the side entrance I saw yesterday, though. Wouldn’t hurt to look into it as well. “

“You really think we will have to climb inside this thing as well?” Athena laughed. “I suppose if we accidentally collapse the lower rooms, we’ll need an alternate exit.”

Odette tapped her chin thoughtfully, but shook her head at the looks shot her way. “Just an idea I need to mull over longer,” she said, brushing off the unspoken question. “Do try not to take too long, Petra. I have a feeling something else is at work here and that we do not have as much time as we think we do.”

“Wouldn’t be too hard, since we weren’t really discussing a time frame,” the redhead replied before heading towards the stairs, Carmen and Snow right behind her.

“They’re going to race, aren’t they?” Athena asked no one in particular, whistling at Snow for him to heel. The wolf sat obediently at the top of the steps, but gave a soft whine.

“Nonsense,” said Odette with a grin. “Carmen is far too mature for that.”

There was a loud clatter of falling stone and high laughter down from the direction the two had gone. Athena and Tae exchanged identical amused looks, but refrained from laughter.

“Why do I bother?” Odette asked the sky for answers. “That is one thing settled. Now for the side entrance Petra claimed to be here.” She swept up onto her feet, motioning for Tae and Athena to follow.

Tae led the way through the fallen columns, her heavy armor either breaking or displacing any stones that might have slowed down cloth-clad Odette and leather-clad Athena. The door they found was as drab as the gilded roof had been eye-catching.

“Probably was hidden out of the way through use of well-placed pillars,” Tae said, kicking rubble out of the way for them to be able to pull it open.

Odette shrugged. “One would hope it is not locked.”

Athena giggled. “We should have thought about that before Petra dashed off.”

“She probably already poked her nose through it last night,” Tae replied, testing the door handle. It turned freely, and she pulled the door open.

It opened to a wide dimly-lit corridor that ran back towards the front. It went only three metres before being filled in with rubble. Another door was directly in front of them, a small sun cross etched into it at eye level. Quiet noises were coming from behind it.

Athena was already in and knocking on the door before either of the other two women could tell her otherwise. The noises stopped.

“Hello?” she shouted through the door. “We’ve messages for Lightbringer Ronald from the temple in Khorevail.”

“Honestly, Athena,” Odette scolded as she and Tae joined her inside. “What do you think you are doing?”

“Either the person in there has no idea who we’re talking about or does. If they don’t, ‘tis because they should not be in there and ‘twill not answer for guilt. And if they do, they will open the door to tell us off for foolishness or the like.”

The door swung open. Tae smiled at the timing. “It’s Roland, and he’s dead, you-” the dark-haired golden-skinned young man broke off, staring at them. He wore the pale blue robes of the laity, not the gold-on-blue of the clergy. While he was likely ordained and capable of leading worship, he could not call upon the magical gifts Jadus granted to his clergymen. “You have naught to turn over, do you? Those snobs in Khorevail only send true mesagiers. Are you looters? Are you mad?”

“Easy now,” Tae said, raising her hands. “I have no idea what the Jadens were thinking when they hired us instead of a trained courier, but we do have a message tube. Not for the Lightbringer, obviously. Though when we saw the state the city was in, we deeply considered heading back and telling them to deliver it themselves.”

He grinned, the mania in his eyes clearing some. “Well, you had a run-in with them for sure. But the messages are too late. Something broke through the catacombs. They were hunting the streets at night for a week after that quake before we finally realized what was happening. The sun-knights went with Lightbringer Roland to try to seal the catacombs, but we never heard back from them. And it seems whatever they did only made it worse. Most everybody’s left by now. Khoresbar died a bit each day before this happened, but this, on top of the drought, was too much. She's a ghost town now.”

“Why did you stay here?”

He led them into the small office. Blueprints were strewn about a large table. A small bookshelf on one wall had been turned into a food storage cupboard, its shelves littered with dry goods that had long shelf lives. Tae slowly took a seat in a rickety chair, fearful it would collapse under the weight of her and her armor. Athena gracefully threw herself into other one, reaching out an arm to grab a heavy paperweight to juggle.

“To find some way to seal up the underground. The catacombs are linked to naught else of the city, so there's no chance of them to find somewhere else to climb up from. Khoresbar may no longer be the heart of an empire, but she’s still too important to allow her to just be abandoned.”

“Did you run a small test on the temple?” Odette asked, scanning the room. “The trolls could not have caused the damage here.”

“It should work. I just did not ween the central column would fall as well,” he said, defensively. “That weakened the keystone of the dome, and it all just fell in. I don’t have enough of the makings for the scale of damage that I’ll need to crumple the low tunnels. They built with arches back then, so it isn’t very hard to get them all to crumble once you’ve got a domino effect going.”

“How do you plan to manage that?” Odette asked, intrigued. “You could not burn the temple down.”

“No, there aren't enough things in here to burn before the fire would starve itself. But stone does crack under strong heat. I thought to douse the walls with vinegar to weaken them, and there’s a warehouse nearby that laid in hundreds of graves of charcoal stores. It’s the only thing I could think of that burns hot enough that I could find enough of it to be of help.” He went to the table and flipped through the large papers. “I’ve gone through their plans, for the finding of the most bolstered walls. They hold most of the load. And I spent a few days on the knocking out of keystones in some of the central rooms to help when it does fall.”

“Collapsing the mount isn’t guaranteed block up the entrance to the underground,” Athena said, wrinkling up her nose. “’Tis no way of telling if they’ll be able to dig it back open. And they will try, they need the space.”

“They’re lazy. They can dig more tunnels instead of the quelling of each other for room to breathe,” he said shortly.

“It will guarantee the tunnels get closed up,” Odette told the woodswoman as she joined the priest at the table. “If you could weaken the major keystones, then destroy the lower walls supporting the upper rooms, the entire thing would crush in on itself, just the like the roof, but on a far larger scale. It would crush some of their higher tunnels as well.”

“How could one get down to the lower levels, though?” Tae asked. “The mishap with the roof caved in all the entrances up here.”

“The temple up here is for people on pilgrimage,” he said sheepishly. “There are some ways in at the base of the mount for the locals to come in for worship. It is something of a maze if you don’t want to go up to the main worship chamber. They built in circles back then, and the sun-knights in charge of the guarding of it have only made it worse.”

“You mean to say we did not have to make that horrendous climb yesterday?” Tae asked in a flat voice.

“You wouldn’t have found anything but trolls down there. And you would have been dreadfully lost if you had gone in, the temple blueprints are in here with me. Did you really have messages to deliver? Helios Basil would have told you about the low doors.”

“We were sent with a tube for Helios Edric-” Odette started, stopping when his head snapped up from the papers he was sorting out.

“Why would the priests in Khorevail send me something?” he asked in a suspicious tone. “I’m the helpmate archivist, it should have been sent to Helios Bertram.”

“I think one of the Isadors was really the one sending the message. Selene Ailith tracked us down at the inn where we were staying the night and demanded we report to the temple of Jadus for a courier job that needed the speediest delivery. The Jadens looked to be humoring her,” Odette said, passing him a large tube from her knapsack. There was a brief flash of color from the tube, signifying delivery had been properly made.

“My sister,” he said softly, taking the tube and slowly breaking the seal. “My birth sister, I mean, not just because all the clergy of Isis and Jadus call themselves brother and sister. I’ve called her sister since I could speak. Even before the Jadens took us in.” Several papers fluttered loose. He waved Odette off when she bent to help him pick them up.

“She was apparently very worried about you,” Tae said. “And the Jadens seemed fond enough of her to pay for us to come all the way out here double-quick.”

“She gets visions. They’re right about three-fourths of the time, though they’re completely off the off mark the rest of the time,” he explained, trying to sort the papers. One had ‘Read This One First!’ scrawled across the top in large loopy letters. Tae was startled to see a folded letter labeled in the Kelathyl tongue. It was an elven language, and they had not met anyone on the continent who spoke it. “Most of the Isadors have the gift, 'tis how they know the Lady of the Silver Moon called them, but Ailith’s come true most often. They allow her small freedoms.” His voice became soft. “Like the remaining in contact with me.”

“Prophecies often change the future by their telling, and that, in turn, can make the vision false,” Tae said. “But she did not mention seeing a vision of here.”

“She never sees me,” Edric said distractedly, skimming the first page of the message. “I’m too close to her.” He looked up from the papers, his air of distraction disappearing. “Did she write these while you waited?”

“No, the tube was already sealed when Helios Cuthric handed it to me,” Odette replied.

“She lists five of you by name,” he said slowly, his eyes moving between the three women in the room with him. “And to tell you that something drives the trolls upwards, that they do not try to resettle. We only have today and tomorrow before it manages to get free.”

Odette looked over to Tae, the same worry on her face that Tae felt. It would take a horrendous beast indeed to drive the trolls out of the labyrinthine underground caverns they called home; they were fiercely territorial, preferring to kill each other to get more territory rather than move elsewhere where there would be more space. Something that would make trolls flee rather than turn and fight was not something that needed to break out onto the surface world. They needed to seal the catacombs up before it managed to escape.

Had this creature, and not the trolls, been what Athena felt the night prior?

“I think you need to compile the lower levels' map for us,” Odette said, turning back to Edric. “And we will need to get to that warehouse and get the charcoal. We will not need the vinegar for weakening, I know something better. Actually, no, I will be more help planning locations for the charcoal.” She looked over at the two half-elves. “You two need to go fish Petra and Carmen out of that troll nest. How do they get to the warehouse, Edric?”

“Four blocks west, two blocks north, right next to Errol’s Smithy,” he replied. “It’s locked, of course, but the door is weak.”

“That will not be a problem,” Tae said as she rose from the chair.

He took in her plate mail and the spiked chain she was unwinding from where it had wrapped around her armored legs. “So I see.”

\----

“Five entrances?” Carmen repeated. “No wonder they disappeared so quickly back inside.”

“I don’t think they’re using one of them,” Petra said. “Four of them were pretty obvious. We didn’t see them yesterday because we weren’t looking for them and they were designed to blend in with the mount’s walls for aesthetic reasons. You can see that they’re proper doors, though. The other is irregularly shaped into one of the Isis panels.”

Carmen sighed. “So you want to go through that one.”

“It’s the one with the least chance of having trolls napping just beyond it.”

“We should check all of them,” she disagreed. “One of them might obviously be the right way to head down.”

“That would be the one with the most trolls,” the redhead said sarcastically. “Can we at least check mine out first? It’s the closest to where we are.” She headed towards the rear corner of the mount without waiting for an answer.

Carmen caught up with her easily. “You have, of course, already worked out the mechanism to open it.”

“Priests make terrible architects when they’re trying to hide something,” Petra said in lieu of reply, reaching a hand up to the sun carved into the lengthy sculpted panel beside them. It was a beautiful rendition of a festival of the new moon, calling on Isis to return her light to her believers. The sun- Jadus’ main symbol and not something that should have been found in a sculpture of a nocturnal scene- was sorely out of place. At Petra’s touch, the sun receded into the wall, and a section of the wall containing a trio of hooded figures swung noisily inwards.

The two cautiously poked their heads in. “’Tis something of a letdown,” the taller woman said after a bit.

It was a small room, entirely empty. There weren’t even sconces on the wall for lights.

“Probably more hidden switches,” the redhead said, kicking at the wall in frustration. “Why else would it be clear of cobwebs and dust?”

“Ah well, no time for that, on to the next,” Carmen said brightly. “Defending ourselves from trolls should brighten your day right up.”

Petra glowered at her, messing with the sun until it moved back into its original position and the wall swung closed again. “You think I can’t hear you thinking ‘I told you so.’”

“Oh I know you can,” Carmen said, leading the way to the next door. “I just don’t care.”

Neither of them was terribly surprised when the next door opened into a large ornate foyer with half a dozen trolls dozing in nests made of what had once been expensive wall hangings. Carmen closed the door quickly as one shifted with a snort, the light from the entrance falling across his closed eyes.

The other three entrances opened onto similar scenes.

“The west entrance looked to be the easiest to clear out,” Carmen said as they returned to the foot of the high steps.

Petra turned to watch two figures make their way slowly down the stairs, a lupine form leaping ahead of them. “Why did they leave Odette behind?”

“Maybe they found an office with maps for her to poke through for us. The descent into the temple will be a nuisance. All those staircases we saw went up.”

“Could be the Isis room is the entrance to the downstairs,” the redhead said, taking a seat to wait for the two on the stairs to finish their trek.

“Or it could be the lower levels are only accessible from higher up,” Carmen offered as she sat down next to her. “Better security.”

“I like my theory better,” Petra said with a haughty sniff. “I’m sure there’s something interesting in there.”

They sat silently watching the two half-elves make their way down the stairs. Athena moved with the sure-footedness of someone who clambered about boulders for fun. She walked as far away from her cousin as she could, not wanting the debris Tae sent tumbling to get in her way. Tae’s clatter echoed loudly in the silent city, a constant reminder of the trouble they had put themselves in. 

“We don’t need to do this,” Petra said softly as the two neared the bottom. “It’s not our city, not our country, not even our continent- in another year we’ll be back in Folly-”

“Just because we are not responsible for the problem doesn’t mean we should not be responsible for the solution,” Carmen said stiffly. “I know you’re tired-”

“I’m not tired, I’m homesick,” Petra said scornfully. “I haven’t seen my family in ten years.”

“That be your own fault. We were only in Folly for two years before we crossed the sea to find Crunch-”

“And isn’t that going along swimmingly?” she said scathingly. “We’ve walked across the entire damn continent and the best I've managed to come up with is rumors of a ruined village in north Telubra. Because every time we get to the next place he allegedly went, he's already gone, evidently months before. And I found this latest one in Khorevail, which you know is the main reason we went along with Selene Ailith’s request that we come here.” She stopped herself from going on as Tae and Athena approached.

“There is a Jaden priest up there with plans to blow up the temple,” Tae said by way of greeting.

“Where do I sign up?” Petra grinned, no sign of her disagreement with Carmen visible. “I love desecrating temples.”

“How does he plan to do that?”

“There’s a warehouse that was stockpiling charcoal a few blocks from here near a smithy,” Athena replied. “He’s trying to get a hot enough fire to collapse the temple into the underground below.”

“Clever,” Petra said, hopping up to her feet, Carmen repeating the action. “I take it we’re playing fetch while Odette tries to figure out the best layout.”

“Exactly,” Athena said. “Three blocks west, two blocks north, right, Tae?”

“Four blocks west, dear. Yet more walking, this time with playing pack mule as well.”

“We’ll also need something to put the charcoal in. You can’t just toss it on the ground and hope for the best.”

“There’s a kitchen in every building here and no one to tell us not to take their cookware,” Carmen said. Petra grinned back at her. So rarely was she allowed to indulge in her love of pocketing every shiny thing she saw.

“We are rather pressed for time, my magpie friend,” Tae said, recognizing the mischievous smile. “The trolls are not moving through the city voluntarily. Something is driving them out. I think that is why they move through the city at night and return to their dens come morning. They do not want to surrender their territory, but they must have come to the conclusion they will have to use Khoresbar as their new nesting grounds. And the diviners of Isis wrote in the messages that whatever is driving the trolls will reach the surface two days from now unless we can block the underground back up.”

“Wonderful. Good thing we work well under pressure,” Carmen said. “Where shall we store the coal while Odette figures out the placements for bringing the mount down?”

Petra did a short drum roll on Carmen’s arm excitedly. “The Isis room! The trolls aren’t there and the briquettes or whatever will stack and it’s completely empty-”

“Where?” Athena asked. “Isis room?”

“One of the wall sculptures down here is an out-of-place night scene dedicated to Isis. ‘Tis a hidden entrance built into it that leads to an empty room. Petra’s disappointed it hadn't anything in it, but it didn’t smell of troll.”

“Or have trolls in it,” Petra added. “Good thing they’re heavy sleepers and we’re light on our toes.” She shot Tae an amused look. “Most of us, anyways.”

\----

Several hours later, the hidden room was overstocked with charcoal stored in large barrels, the women were covered in dusty black powder, and Petra was grinning madly at Odette over the map the sorceress had worked out with Edric.

“It’s not enough to just have pots brimming with charcoal. Sure, they’ll burn well, but we need to set off a chain reaction, probably on several levels. So they’ll need to be vaguely connected to the next one down the line, to make sure they all get burning. Weakening stone takes a long time, and we don’t have much of that. I mean, weakening the arches by stressing their keystones is brilliant,” she told the wide-eyed priest as her fingers traced paths through the multistory building, “but we need redundancy plans.”

“What were you thinking of?” Odette asked.

“The cooperage where we helped ourselves to all those barrels,” Petra said, her eyes bright. “They’ll have pitch, and all that lovely timber pre-cut into slabs for us.”

“You want us to make some sort of ramp to lead between the sites to help carry the fire? The slabs wouldn’t be long enough.”

“Athena’s a fantastic woodshaper, and Carmen can probably do it, if pressed. Sure, it’s dead wood, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be reformed. Or, better yet, reattached,” Petra waggled her eyebrows provocatively. “The hard part will be getting it set up on different levels. I think the trolls are spreading out down there, and the more places we go, the better our chances of running into them.”

“’Tis a lot of wood,” Athena said. “I don’t know if I have the energy to shape the amount we need.”

“What about rope instead?” Edric offered. “It will soak the pitch in better and fire will spread along it faster.”

“It also has more flexibility,” Petra agreed, looking pleased. “I like you, you’re clever. I insist you stop futzing about in troll-infested cities and start doing real work, like research into why no one but Haven has figured out the recipe for liquid fire.”

“Leave him alone,” Odette scolded while the dark-haired man blushed and stammered something about returning to Khorevail for a new post. “We have better things to do than let you mock temple clergy.”

“Laity,” the young priest corrected weakly.

“They’re so useless,” Petra muttered. “They should be like Tae. All clerics should be peregrine, wandering about teaching the ideals of their patron, healing the sick, and smiting the wicked.”

The priestess dimpled at her, while simultaneously swatting her with a sheaf of papers off the desk. “To work, trickster,” she ordered. “If we use rope, what will we need?”

“Barrels of pitch for the rope to soak in while we set up the charcoal pots,” the elf replied automatically. “We should get to work on that now, they will need to sit overnight to maximize the amount of pitch they soak up. It’s probably best if we divide the chores. Tae’s too noisy to bring inside, even if I spelled her invisible. She could prepare the pots, though.”

“You, Carmen, and Athena are the quiet workers,” Odette agreed. “Give Edric and me some time to work out routes for you, while you prepare the charcoal pots and get the pitch barrels.”

“Keep an eye on the sky,” Athena said. “Trolls may be nocturnal, but they can still wake up before twilight.”

“When they start to move around, we’ll have to stop,” Carmen agreed, “but remember they leave the mount at night to prepare places for themselves in the city. 'Twill be mostly empty and we can get some work done then as well.”

“Until we’re too tired to think, anyway. Maybe for awhile. I’d rather not chance how late a diviner’s forecast of ‘soon’ runs.”

“I'll start scrounging up the rope. There's bound to be a general store within easy walking distance, and if there's not, I can steal those laundry lines,” Petra said, heading for the door. “Carmen, start hauling the pitch barrels to that house near the Isis entrance. Probably better if they aren’t left in the street for the trolls to trip over tonight,” she explained. “The rest of you are going to need to start scrounging up a goodly amount of crockery.” She looked put out about the others getting to raid strangers' kitchens instead of her.

\----

“I know I said you were invisible,” Petra hissed as she bumped into Athena, who was carefully setting down an overflowing cauldron of charcoal under a defaced portrait of a former Lightbringer, “but that doesn’t mean you can make noise. It only works on their eyes, not their ears.”

“These things are heavy. I am doing the best I can,” Athena defended. “Why do you think Odette gave me all the spots nearest the entrances? I’m nowhere near as light on my toes as you or Carmen, so she didn’t want my routes leading through a lot of troll filled tunnels.”

“I hadn’t really thought about why she chose the routes she did. She’s the common sense part of the planning. Doubting her plans is like questioning which direction the sun will rise in. But, that explains the huge trek I’ve got with the smaller pots. Carmen’s got those huge cauldrons to haul about too, but she could probably cart me around without making a noise. You’re both woodsfolk, why such different skills?”

“We have discussed this before,” Athena said, giving Petra an annoyed look. “We had different training. All woodsfolk have basic martial and spiritual training. I took the path of wood-speaking. My fey heritage makes it easier to use the natural magic of the world. Carmen has no such gift to help her, so she studied the physical aspects instead.”

“So that is why you can learn healing spells from Tae and Carmen can’t.”

“Precisely,” Athena said, moving on to her next drop site, taking care to step lighter. Odette had had Athena shape some of the boards from the cooperage into yokes for hauling more containers than just the two or three the women could have carried with their hands. “Shouldn’t you be busy? We’ve still got an hour or so before the sun starts setting and the trolls start moving around.”

“Never let it be said I cannot take a hint.”

Athena just shook her head, too tired to banter.

Petra headed in the opposite direction until she reached the entrance foyer and its sleeping trolls. She skirted her way along the wall to the door. They had chosen this one as their main point of entrance because the quartet of trolls who had laid claim to the room had curled themselves up into a dog pile, blocking off one of the passageways. The other entrances had the trolls nesting more haphazardly. These here were most likely a family unit.

Snow gave a soft woof of greeting as she stepped outside into the sun. Athena had ordered him to stay by the door. Petra thought it was less to do with guarding it and more to do with his cleverness at opening and closing doors. He helpfully nudged the door mostly shut behind her and she gave him a quick scratch behind his ears before dashing down the street to the house near the Isador festival wall sculpture where they had set up shop for the time being.

They had managed to drag the Jaden priest down as well, his arms filled with blueprints and blank papers for route changes. There had been major ones when they discovered the dogpiled quartet of trolls had blocked off one of the main corridors.

Petra’s last string of pot placements had consisted of her going in through the very crowded southern entrance through a series of unfortunately highly-occupied rooms to reach one of the main chambers they needed to collapse. Its only other entrance was through the blocked corridor. She’d barely been able to breathe, tiptoeing through the trolls with her heavy burden. She hoped the next route she was given wasn’t quite so stressing.

“This one will not be as complicated as the last,” Odette said in greeting as Petra entered. 

She sat amidst a forest of diagrams, Mantha on the table near her, pecking at a frayed paper. Edric and Tae were set up in the kitchen area with a peddler’s assortment of kitchenware- primarily good sized pots, but there was the odd cauldron. The key component, besides being either wide or deep, was to have a handle to slide onto the yokes for transportation. Half a dozen large barrels half full of pitch had been placed near the entrance and packed with lengthy coils of rope, raising the pitch to such a level it was almost spilling over. Every window in the house had been covered by heavy dark-colored bedspreads in preparation for night. That, more than the unsteady lamplight, gave the house a gloomy feel.

“Provided there are no more surprises,” she continued, swatting the bored owl's beak, “the routes should be all set and I can join Tae and Edric in preparing the containers.” Mantha crab-walked his way away from her, closer to an inkwell. Odette lifted it out of his way. He gave her an unblinking stare, then flitted across the table to perch on the back of the other empty chair.

Petra laughed at the silent interchange.

“Edric was uncomfortable with me conversing with him about the charts,” Odette explained softly, one eye on the open doorway between the two rooms. The kitchen's occupants looked entirely focused on their work, murmuring softly to each other about the differences between the sun gods they worshiped. “I do not think there are many people with familiars in these parts. I had Mantha stay with Tae in the kitchen earlier while we worked on the maps. So now that they have traded places, he feels he must give his opinion on the work. And his opinion of Helios Edric.”

Mantha made a hacking noise.

“Should I be worried that's what he thinks of your maps?” Petra asked slyly as Odette gave the owl an unimpressed look.

“Of course not,” Odette retorted, turning her head to give the redhead the same look. “We shall need to get more charcoal barrels soon. We cannot squeeze too many in here without it becoming completely unmanageable.”

“It’s just across the street.” Petra said in a loud disbelieving voice as she dropped down beside the sorceress to peer over her new map. “Why do I get all the weird routes?”

“I am trying to avoid the rooms you mentioned having too many trolls in them to safely go through,” Odette said, returning to a normal speaking tone. “We can do the drops in those rooms tonight after the trolls have spread out, but I would rather get as much done before twilight as possible. We want to be able to just lay the rope and torch it in the morning. I wish there was a way to drive the trolls back into the underground before we bring the mount down on them.” She frowned. “It is not really their fault.”

“Trolls regenerate from practically every injury,” Petra replied, then added as an afterthought, “Barring fire. Something in their regenerative system doesn’t like fire. Maybe because it cauterizes the wound,” she trailed off, and then shook her head to clear her thoughts. “The survivors will likely dig themselves up and out into the city proper. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”

“They could make a crusade of retaking the city from the fiendish squatters who have taken hold of it,” Edric said from his place in the kitchen. His charcoal-dusted hands were almost as dark as his hair.

“Of course, trolls are neither fiendish nor squat, but that has never stopped an artistic turn of phrase before,” Tae said. She motioned for Petra to get back to work.

Petra scooped up her route sheet and folded it up neatly to fit into one of her many pockets, and walked to the counter the healer and the priest were working on. “Load it up,” she said, leaning her yoke against the counter. “I’ve got more trolls to step on.”

“Please don’t,” Edric said with a pained look on his face as he placed the yoke on the counter. “Wake one up and the rest will wake as well. And we don’t want them to change their wonts tonight. We chance enough with the putting of all these pots against the walls.”

“Which they’ll hopefully brush off as weird human clutter,” Tae said, sliding somewhat overfilled pots onto the yoke.

“There’s only going to be time for one or two more routes,” Petra told Odette. “Athena says sunset is in just an hour or so.”

“We are getting close to completion,” Odette informed her evenly. “There are few drop sites left in troll-free areas, so I think it safe to say we have made excellent time.”

“We haven’t even approached the center of the complex. I know Athena’s routes are keeping her skirting the outsides, and I can tell even with the way mine zigzags that I’m dodging around the central corridors.”

“The closer to the center you go, the more trolls there will be. The Sun’s Exultation Chamber is the center of the entire mount and is the main room with stairs leading downwards into the true catacombs and, considering the size of the room, it will likely be overflowing with trolls. With its centralized location and seven metre ceiling, it will be the focal point for the collapse. I have been saving it for tonight’s dark hours to ensure there are as few trolls occupying it as possible. Carmen and Athena will be setting cauldrons on the opposite sides of its walls in all those centralized corridors and rooms you complained about skipping while you do the main chamber itself.”

“That does make sense.” Petra hefted the restocked yoke across her shoulders. 

“Do be careful,” Tae said as the redhead headed for the door. “It will be difficult for me to fish you out of trouble without waking every troll in there.”

\----

Night had fallen an hour prior, and they had gathered together once again in the house they had claimed for their work. Odette sat with Edric quietly discussing their plans, pointing out different rooms that still needed to be prepared. Mantha supervised from his normal perch on Odette's shoulder. The small candle on the table they stood over was the only light in the house. The lamps had been extinguished to keep from drawing the attention of the trolls now roaming Khoresbar’s streets. Tae had coaxed Athena into helping her prepare more of the flammable pots while they waited for the traffic outside to die down and Petra was prodding the ropes inside the pitch barrels, checking on how well the soak was going. Carmen handed her a towel as she finished up.

“That doesn’t speed up the process, you know,” she told the girl.

Petra set to scrubbing down her arms and hands, trying to get the oily substance off. “The rope on top needed to be squished down. They’ve soaked up so much that the level has dropped.”

“We should be about set to start again,” Edric said. He turned to the half-elves in the dark kitchen. “How goes things with you ladies?”

“We’re just about out of pots,” Athena said.

“There looks to be plenty for what rooms there are left to do,” Tae added. “Unless you run into something unusual.”

“The only unusual thing would be the central chamber of worship,” Odette said. “It is a large room, but there do not seem to be many columns holding up the ceiling. Once the ceiling there falls, the rest is all but guaranteed to collapse as well. Getting it to do so is another story entirely.”

“Have we given the trolls enough time to clear out of the temple?” Athena asked.

“There’s also the chance they haven’t all left the building,” Petra added. Her arms were a spotty black, but no longer dripping pitch onto the floor.

“It is a chance we must take,” Odette replied. “They started waking before night fell, and we will need to rest between now and our final actions in the morning. That means getting the rest of the fire pots into the temple as early as we can get away with.”

“So grab your yokes and line up on that side of the door,” Tae said cheekily. “Athena gets first dibs because she helped.”

“I asked if you wanted help,” Petra complained, following Carmen into the kitchen. Carmen dodged easily around the snoozing wolf lying against the wall. There was a soft yelp of pain as Petra stepped on Snow’s tail and the redhead scrambled further into the kitchen. Carmen chuckled softly.

“Did that nasty elf step on you, dearest?” Athena asked, kneeling down before the unhappy wolf.

“It’s dark!” Petra said.

“He’s white,” Tae said flatly.

The wolf grumbled to himself, but settled back down under Athena’s hands.

“You did that on purpose.”

Carmen grinned. “For cert I did not. Often do you say that you have good vision.”

“I said nothing about night vision. And it’s practically pitch black where he’s taken shelter.”

“Quit playing around in there,” Odette called. “Some of us would like to get to sleep after a week of folding land.”

“Sorry, Odette,” they all chimed in together.

“Honestly, they are like children,” she complained to Edric. He gave her an uneasy smile, unsure if he wanted to be included in their banter.

Once they had their burdens settled, Carmen cracked the front door open to peek out. While it was a few days shy of the new moon, the darkened city made the sky look even brighter. She couldn’t see any movement on the street. “Looks clear,” she said, stepping out, Athena and Petra behind her.

“Are you going to spell us invisible again?” Athena asked softly as they walked slowly towards the entrance they had been using. There was a nearer one, but Odette thought that using the same entrance each time would make it easier for them to remember their routes.

Petra shook her head. “Not yet. It’s a complicated spell, I can’t really cast it that often. You’ll just have to be very careful right now.”

Athena sighed softly. “I expected as much.”

“Quiet,” Carmen said sharply. “I’d rather not have any trolls wonder what the noise is and come to investigate.”

She couldn’t say she was really surprised when they rounded the corner and one stood a short distance away, looking directly towards them.

“Oops,” Petra said from somewhere around her elbow as the troll started loping its way towards them. “Probably best to head back so nobody else decides to crash the party.”

“Anyone else not want to fight holding onto these things?” Carmen asked as they did an about face and scrambled back the way they came. She looked back to double check it had followed them instead of going for help.

It had obviously decided three small girls were too tasty to be shared and was loping in its awkward fashion after them.

“You’re the only one with a weapon,” Athena said. “Discounting Petra’s boot knife.”

“The only way it would notice would be if I hit its eye,” Petra said, bending forward to come out from under the yoke to carry it in front of her. “And that would just annoy it. I have a better idea.” She dropped the yoke, catching it deftly on one foot and gently set it down. She cartwheeled backwards, twisting catlike mid-air to land facing the troll and started sprinting forward.

Carmen cursed softly, and hurriedly dropped her yoke into Athena’s hands for her to either hold onto or set more carefully on the ground than Carmen had time for. She drew one of the bastard swords she had slung across her back and chased after the speedy redhead. Petra had already shot past the troll, who now stood halted, twisting its head backwards to her, and then forwards back to where Athena and Carmen were.

It finally decided Petra was the easier target- likely because she was closer; it couldn’t have much fear of Carmen’s sword. She knew from personal experience that trolls had to take a serious beating before they really started feeling pain. It started shuffling towards her while Carmen raced to catch up. Petra stood with her arms crossed, idly scratching at her pitch-splattered sleeves.

Carmen thought she knew what the clever redhead was up to. It would take careful timing and a little bit of luck on placement, though. She slowed her run down, reaching her left hand down to grasp onto the sword hilt as well.

The troll reached the redhead and she threw both hands up and forwards, clicking the fingers on both hands. Fire blazed at her fingertips, and then bloomed an angry red as the pitch she had soaked her arms in caught fire as well. The troll flinched backwards with a scared yelp, turning-

Carmen’s two-handed grip on her sword let her cut through its neck like a knife through butter. Its head went flying in the direction of the body’s spin, and it raised its hands to tap at the top of its neck in a confused manner. She let out a loud huff of air.

“I hate you so much,” she gasped at the fire-wielding elf. The troll started to shamble away from them, its arms outstretched as it searched for where its head had landed.

Petra made a motion with her hands, and the fire blazing along her arms moved upwards to coalesce into a ball at her fingertips.

“That could have gone much worse,” she replied, flicking the fireball towards the lurching troll. It jackknifed as its entire body was engulfed in flames. Carmen lifted one foot to boot it towards the stone building they stood beside. It stumbled a bit and then collapsed in a smoky heap.

Athena made her way gingerly towards them, carefully balancing the load across her shoulders with the two others that had been left with her.

“I hope they won’t miss that one,” she said, motioning with her fingers to take her burden before she dropped them.

Carmen hefted hers up easily out of the blonde’s hands. “We were coming back,” she said. “You needn’t have done that.”

Petra ducked under and caught the yoke across her shoulders and stood, lifting it out of Athena’s hands. “It won’t matter. In another twelve hours or so, they’ll all be going out that way. The unlucky ones, anyway.”

Athena took the freeing of her hands as a sign to help Carmen settle her yoke. “I take it the lucky ones are the ones that either flee outside or downwards back into the catacombs and the underground?”

“Those would be the unlucky ones, if you ask me,” Carmen said, as she finished resettling her burden. “That monster will still be down there and anything left in the city will be gotten rid of by the people who return.”

“If they do,” Petra said, turning to once again head towards the temple entrance. “This has got to be the most dismal place in Sundabar, discounting the far north where Telubra’s haunted mountains poke their way past the Sund borders.”

“What did you do to your arms?” Athena asked, noticing the girl’s scorched green sleeves. The over-sized tunic’s sleeves were pitted with holes all along her forearms, though the gray hooded shirt she wore underneath had gone untouched. Carmen wondered at that- Petra had rolled up both sets of sleeves to mess about in the pitch barrels. How had the undershirt gone untouched by the flames she had set off using the pitch on her skin?

“Trolls are scared of fire. And here was me already doused in something flammable,” she explained.

“What about your shirt?” Carmen asked, motioning with her fingers towards her sleeves.

Petra peered down. “Huh,” she said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to hem that. It doesn’t do to look like you stole your clothes out of a fire pit.”

Athena giggled. “I think she meant the one that didn’t catch fire.”

“That would be the robe I had enchanted to better blend in with the scenery. If it had caught fire I would have been very upset. Enchanted cloth is supposed to stand up to hard use.”

“Do you really think you need help with being sneaky?” Carmen asked disbelievingly.

“Well, that’s why I wear the tunic over it,” Petra pointed out. “And isn’t tucking a robe into my pants a hassle? I ended up practically folding it in half and hemming the silly thing.” She raised an arm up against the wall they stood beside and Carmen watched the gray fabric slowly darken in uneven splotches to match the stone’s discoloration. “But if it’s a really bright room, it’s just a matter of pulling off the tunic, giving a quick tug on the hem to break the stitches and pulling the hood up and presto, one practically invisible elf with no need for a spell that won’t let me use weapons.”

“And now the truth of the matter comes out,” Athena said. “Your trouble with your invisibility spell.”

Petra stuck her tongue out. “At least I have one.”

“Too bad we can’t muffle you,” Carmen said, putting a finger to her lips to quiet them. Petra cocked her head to the side, listening for what had set Carmen off.

Soft shuffling footsteps came closer. They stopped walking, staying silent and still as the troll scraped along a block away. She could hear Athena inhale sharply to hold her breath. But the footsteps turned away, and the blonde released her breath quietly.

“How abouts we hold off on the chatter until we get inside,” Carmen finally said as the footsteps faded away. “No telling if anyone else saw your fire’s light.”

“‘Tis a good idea,” Athena said faintly. “One run-in with a troll was bad enough. We might not be so lucky with the next.”

They stayed quiet for the rest of the walk.

\----

The Sun’s Exultation Chamber was beautiful. It was circular in shape, its main floor half-filled with seating circling a presbytery for the Lightbringer to lead the call to worship. A large elaborate vermilion circular rug marked out the presbytery’s location inside four giant stone columns, thickly padded for the speaker to pace comfortably on. A second level of balcony seating struck out from the walls at the four cardinal points, held up by ornate marble pillars. The ceiling was dominated by a huge gilded dome centered about the presbytery, its pendentives transitioning gracefully into the four great stone piers that bore its weight. In lieu of windows, the walls were filled with floor to ceiling mosaics of the different festivals of Jadus. The jutting balconies had been adorned with a simple alternating sun and moon tile pattern to keep the viewer’s eyes from being distracted from the wall mosaics.

While most temples dedicated to Jadus were filled with windows to allow for more sunlight, the interior location of this one had left the priests at a loss for a replacement for the visual representation of their god’s holy light. A solution had been brought forth by a local glass blower at the time the priests began their occupation of the temple. Large yellow glass globes hung from every rafter, left constantly glowing by small ever-burning candles the priests had magically crafted for the job. The largest of these hung inside the great dome itself, etched with a pattern of the god’s holy symbol. With the light reflecting off the gilded dome, it was as if the sun itself had been drawn down into the temple.

Petra couldn’t understand why the sun-hating trolls hadn’t destroyed the room.

“Must be why the trolls sleep in all those front chambers,” Carmen said from where she stood behind Petra, Athena at her side. “Didn’t want to run the gauntlet of this every night.”

“‘’Tis a wonder of ancient design,” the other woodswoman marveled. “I feel terrible having to destroy this. It must be Jadus’ touch that keeps the trolls from defacing it. Edric’s descriptions did not do it justice.”

“A bard could not describe this beauty,” Carmen said softly. “’Tis no wonder the ‘Barens refused to abandon their city even with the drought and famine, when they had this to worship in to keep their spirits up.”

“Do you think the temple of Isis here would look like this as well?” Petra questioned, setting down her yoke.

“Isis is a goddess of simplicity,” Athena replied. “It will no doubt be as beautiful, but less splendid. But ‘tis not the time for gaping. Do your spells and let Carmen and I be off to our own duties.”

Petra murmured a short incantation, setting one hand first on Carmen, then Athena. The two disappeared. “Remember to be as quiet as possible and not to draw a weapon. Aggression will cause the spell to fall immediately.”

“So you warned us before,” came Carmen’s disembodied voice. “We still remember.” Their footsteps receded, leaving Petra alone in the great room.

Of most import was destroying the piers that bore the great dome. Hot fire alone would do little to weaken them; their gargantuan build left them virtually indestructible in the face of the elements. She got to work setting her charcoal pots in the other drop sites in the room while she considered the problem. Spells could easily break them, but that would cause the dome to crumble too quickly. It was a chain reaction of collapse they wanted. 

Perhaps, she mused as she wandered through the pillars to the next site, they could start the fires first and then smash the pillars. Odette was able to teleport herself short distances, and of course had the necessary spell power for destroying the great stone columns. But Odette’s elemental magic was lightning-based, which could not set off the fires. That would be Petra’s task. 

Petra liked the barely-leashed power that the difficult-to-control element of fire possessed. Getting fires started on three levels without getting herself stuck in a burning stone temple mount would be tricky, but she liked a challenge. And if she did have to leave Odette here in the center to take out the dome’s piers, the timing would be even trickier. She would have to set the fires to circle in towards Odette’s location to give the walls more time to start weakening before Odette took the columns out to get the collapse started, while still allowing Petra enough time to exit and get far enough away she wasn’t incapacitated by a flying piece of rubble.

Tricky, she decided, but do-able. She finished placing the last of the pots down and surveyed the room. The number Odette and Edric had decided upon seemed insufficient for the task, considering they hadn’t planned on destroying the piers. Edric had overestimated the damage the heat would cause them and Odette hadn’t seen their size. She would have to discuss the problem with them when she returned to the house. 

There were still a few changes she would have to make to the room first. There was no telling how the trolls would react upon seeing Odette in the chamber. Best to prepare for the worst. She grinned, eying the contents of the bright room.

Desecrating temples was always fun. And she’d be half a world away by the time anyone managed to clear up enough of the rubble to see what remained. And what the other women didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

\----

“As much rope as we have, ‘tis still not enough to connect them all. Some of the charcoal pots will have to be lit by hand,” Carmen said. When the exodus of trolls returned for their daily rest inside the temple, they had taken shelter in their blacked-out house, dimming all the lights and silently listening to the grumbled jostling of sleepy angry trolls as light began to work its way into the night sky. The noise had quieted down shortly before daybreak and now they were giving the trolls an hour or two to get into a deeper stage of sleep before heading back in with the rope-filled pitch barrels for the final stage of preparation.

“That is all there was,” Tae replied. “I checked every house within walking distance when I realized they were planning more walls for collapse than originally intended. I even took a page out of Petra’s book and made off with the sturdier laundry lines.”

“It’s not a serious problem. We’ll get pots in the center of the mount connected together. The ones left unconnected can be lit on the way out. I’ll get the top floor lit, since I’ll be the one actually getting the rest of them going.”

“Are you certain the smell won’t wake the trolls?” Athena asked. “Charcoal is usually used for cooking, they might think it’s time to eat.”

“They eat their meat raw, they won’t understand the smell as food,” Edric disagreed. “But they will understand it as fire. Which they are rightfully frightened by.”

“We’ll have to be quick about it, then,” Carmen said. “Get everyone inside to help lay the rope. I can light the unconnected containers on the second floor, while you three,” she looked at Tae, Athena, and Edric, “light the entrance floor on your way out. I be quicker than you and less likely to be spotted, so I should take the middle floor. Petra’s right about doing the top floor herself, she’ll need to light all three series of the rope-connected pots, so she’ll be on the top already.”

“Light the upper two from the stairwells so you will not have to outrace the fire,” Odette suggested. “Start the bottom floor from the end closest to the entrance so I will know to bring the columns down when the fire reaches the containers in the Exultation Chamber with me.”

“That will also give me the time to get out of the blast radius,” Petra said, nodding.

“Our goal is the sinking of the building, why would there be debris flung outward?” the dark-haired priest asked.

“You did see the damage your experiment did to the exterior walls of the temple at the top of this place, yes?” Tae asked. “Those pillars went everywhere.”

“Not to mention the ricochet of the lighter stuff,” Carmen added. “We don’t have the time or the training to do a tidy collapse that the dwarves would congratulate us for, so ‘tis all off-the-cuff plans that we know work on a smaller scale. Things be bound to react differently in execution, so we can only plan for the most likely results.”

“Where should we meet back up?” Athena asked, getting the conversation back on track. “It has to be someplace memorable for Odette to teleport to. I doubt she will be in good shape for exercise directly after expending that much energy at once.”

“Correct,” Odette agreed. “The entrance at the city gates would work. Those doors were very memorable, and it will certainly be far enough away from the mount for us to not worry about flying debris larger than us.”

“And I can climb up the walls to the battlements to check out the results,” Carmen said. “I feel guilty about not adding the rope from my climbing gear to the barrels, but it’s too specially made to be able to just replace in the next town we go to.”

“We know, Carmen, and completely understand,” Tae said. “You need not keep apologizing for it. We would still be short rope, even with its addition.”

“Are we all packed up?” Athena asked. “There won’t be time afterwards. We want to be able to just come in and grab our things and run like mad.”

“Most everything is set,” Tae replied.

“I’ll need to cast a spell of silence on you, Tae. Your armor makes enough noise to wake the dead, never mind sleeping trolls,” Petra said.

“What about Sorceress Odette? She’ll be in the central room with the stairs downwards. Any trolls wake up to the fire, they might flee that way,” Edric pointed out.

“Yes, but she needs to be able to speak her spells. My spells aren’t such that I can shape them to let her mouth make noise while the rest of her is silent. Most of what I can cast is a balance of need versus price. If you want to be invisible, you can’t bring attention to yourself by waving a weapon around. If you don’t want anyone to hear you, you can’t choose to suddenly be heard until the spell runs down. Well, I could shut it off, but I won’t be there. And Odette probably doesn’t want to use that extra bit of energy required for overcoming it. She needs to focus everything on the piers.”

“Magic isn’t your main area of learning, is it?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I pick up enough to get by and let the real wizards worry about overcoming the checks and balances of the system.”

“Cast it on me as well,” he said. “It will give me one less thing to worry about going in there.” He looked very young and scared as he spoke. Entering a temple that was currently housing well over a hundred trolls was a bit out of his training. “Any headings I might say I can give by the waving about of my arms.”

“As you like,” Petra agreed with a grin. “Tae?”

“You know very well I am not going to refuse,” the healer replied. “I can do heavy lifting, but I am not one to do so quietly. Obviously being silenced is the only way I can help inside.”

\----

Odette stood in the center of the Sun's Exultation Chamber, holding herself from pacing along the great spiral design mosaic that she stood upon. She had moved the seating pews out of the way of the door that led to the great stairwell leading downwards into the depths of the temple catacombs in hopes that when the trolls started fleeing back to the tunnels, they would move as quickly through this room as possible and not notice the single human standing in the center of all the light. If they did, hopefully the rearranged furniture should slow them down long enough for her to do something about the matter.

The interior of the building had been very chilly, Carmen had said, but the Exultation Chamber was not. Odette believed this partially caused by the candles left constantly burning in the lighted globes above her head, for when she had arrived in the room, it had been merely pleasantly cool. Now it was beginning to grow warm, a sure sign of the fires spreading throughout the floors above. Smoke had not reached this room, but she had had to leave the great entrance doors flung open to allow the pitch-soaked ropes to make their way into the room, and it was only a matter of time before the air grew thin and smoky-gray as the fires grew in size and strength.

She heard them before she saw them. A great thundering of quick footsteps echoed through the room as the long-armed wooden-looking trolls loped their way in, barking at each other as they tried to get out of the brightly-lit room as quickly as possible. They never turned their heads in her direction, but she did her best to look inconspicuous.

One veered off and headed in her direction, its eyes narrowed, barely visible under his pointed brow. It looked a great deal like a thorn bush given humanoid form. Odette thought for a second, wondering if it were true- some ancient wizard needing automatons and giving his dead garden life, but leaving it with the deep fear of fire. She shook her head, clearing the thoughts. Now was not the time to be distracted, not with a troll two and a half metres tall bulldozing its way through pews towards her.

“To be expected,” she murmured, raising an arm up, hardening the air in front of it in a spread five metres long. “Hopefully that will keep you distracted until the fire arrives here and you decide I am not as important as survival.”

As if her words were what it had been waiting for, fire came racing into the room, barely visible through the trolls streaming in through the double doors. It wound its inexorable way around the great room, into the charcoal containers lining the walls, onto former seat coverings Petra had dropped into the containers leading into the seating areas. The troll at her barrier quickly gave up as fire danced towards it from pew to pew.

“Clever Petra, to know how to make certain they stayed cut off from the center,” Odette said, watching the growing inferno. The spiral-decorated presbytery she stood in was entirely devoid of furniture or decoration, nothing for the flames to leap to. Odette was certain there used to be either a podium or an altar- or possibly both- and was just as certain Petra had made off with all of its small art pieces when she had rearranged the area for greater protection of the woman who would stand in the center of the flames.

She gave one final glance down to the spiral, confused about the huge dark purple mosaic in the golden room. There must have been a rug covering it that Petra had used to help the pews catch fire. She could not remember reading about the temple being originally dedicated to another god, but it must have been. Neither Isis nor Jadus used the spiral as a symbol.

The air was growing thick with smoke. Thoughts on the matter would have to wait until there was time to voice her concerns. She raised her eyes to the two stone piers in front of her, then lifted her arms up and brought them down in a quick slashing motion. Lightning coursed the length of them in a brilliant blaze of blue. Cracks ran down the two and there was an ominous rumbling noise as small rocks began trickling out of them. Quickly spinning to face the other two, she repeated the motion. More lightning struck downwards, summoned by her magic.

One last spell before leaving, she decided. The pillars would fall soon, but she had to guarantee more than just this chamber crumbled quickly. She cupped her hands together for one final summoning from the plane of lightning. Blue light shone, and her hands were forced further apart by the swirl of energies. She frowned in concentration. She could not completely exhaust her magical stores for she still needed energy to leave, but she had to put as much power into this as possible.

Over the groan of crumbling stone she could hear the howls of trolls from beneath as the great monster rose up through the catacombs, killing its way out. She had run out of time.

She flung her hands in opposite directions, forcing the lightning to arc both ways. Mosaic-decorated walls collapsed as lightning shot its way through them like a spear through fish. Further walls past those crumbled as the lightning continued its way out. There was a loud cracking noise and Odette quickly looked up. The golden globe inside the dome had broken free and was falling downwards towards her.

She brought her hands back together with a loud clap and disappeared. Glass shattered where she had stood moments before.

\----

The silence was broken up by a long angry howling that Carmen expected could be heard for several kilometres. It rattled through her teeth and left the hairs on her arms standing straight up. She could hardly imagine the size of the beast a roar like that would require.

Mantha hooted softly into her ear. Odette had transferred the little owl to Tae's care while she performed her magic, but he had quickly changed to a more comfortable perch on Carmen's shoulders. He took off with a sharp shove, circling around her once before flying out of sight. It was a sure sign that Odette had arrived.

“That must be the beast,” Athena shouted up to Carmen where she stood on the city walls, above where the gates once stood.

“Selene Ailith was right to tell us to hurry,” she shouted back down. It would have been better had the Isador priestess informed them of the matter before they left, but perhaps she had worried they would not have taken the job if they had known what they were actually being hired for. They had all wondered about the exorbitant fee the Jadens had offered for the double-time courier job. Their mesagier system was almost as fast as Odette's transportation spell, and far less tiring on the specially-bred horses the couriers swapped between. Hired for their equestrian skills, not martial ones, a mesagier would have been useless against both the trolls and the beast rampaging below.

“I hate diviners,” Petra shouted back, a similar thing obviously on her mind.

“There's a debris cloud. Looks like the whole mount folds in upon itself,” she shouted down to them as she hooked herself back up into her climbing gear. It was uncomfortable, and no one had known how long it would take before they received evidence that their work had gone well. She’d rather the time spent getting in and out of it than an unknown amount of time spent stretching constantly to keep from getting pinched in uncomfortable places.

When she finished her climb down, she noticed Tae and the Jaden priest bent over Odette's fallen form, Mantha circling restlessly overhead. Athena was kneeling near them, pressing her forehead to Snow’s head in silent communion. She suppressed a twinge of envy at the woman’s easy rapport with her bondmate. The magic of the woodsfolk did not come easily to her, and Athena’s status as wood-speaker often had her feeling left behind. Her martial prowess was far greater than any of the other women’s, but the ease with which they worked with the different magical energies was often a much more visible sign of power.

“Smoke inhalation,” Petra informed her, appearing at her side. She carefully refrained from smiling as Carmen jumped in surprise. “I'm not surprised. I turned that room into a death trap.”

“I thought you had taken too long,” Carmen said, watching the healers work. “What did you do? And why? You knew Odette had to wait it out in there.”

“Precisely,” the redhead replied. “She had to wait in the center of a temple with a horde of trolls panicking her way. I wanted to make sure they left her alone.”

“And trolls fear fire more than mice fear cats and a fat man an empty cupboard,” she said, understanding. “But how did you know Odette would be able to get out in time? ‘Twill not take smoke long to overwhelm someone.”

The elf shrugged. “I didn't. But I told her she wouldn't have much time to get things done when the fires started and to prepare accordingly. It's probably the other reason behind her collapse- expending all her energy in as big a spell as she could manage because there was no time for second tries.”

“Ye could’ve got her killed,” Carmen said angrily.

“And the trolls could have killed her before she had a chance to finish the job,” Petra snapped back at her. “It was a calculated risk and it was better than leaving her completely undefended in a room full of trolls. They might hate light, but that didn't stop them from getting into the city through that chamber and I wasn't going to count on the light to keep them from seeing and attacking her.”

“Be at ease,” Athena said, coming over to them as their voices rose. “Odette will be fine. Just tired and hoarse from breathing in too much smoke. Snow will let me shape his form into something to carry her to the next town, so she need not even worry about walking.”

“Just saddle sores,” Petra said with a grin, letting the angry defensiveness dissipate. “What did you bargain with Snow to make him agree to take a non-carnivorous form?”

“A fresh boar when we reach peopled civilization,” the blonde replied. “He's tired of stringy game.”

“A good bargain all around then,” Carmen told her. Upset as she was with Petra's actions, it was not the time to be arguing.

“Don't tell him I was going to do so anyway,” Athena replied with a mischievous look. “He's looking a mite underweight.”

Odette was helped into a sitting position by Tae, the dark-haired priest of Jadus moving awkwardly away.

“Thank you,” he told her fervently, then looked around at the rest of them. “I never would have finished before that beast arrived. I never would have known about it. I know you were just hired to bring a message-”

“The amount we were paid was more in keeping with the actual job we did than the job we were hired for,” Athena said, walking over and placing a friendly hand on his shoulder, cutting off his nervous babble.

“Who built the temple?” Odette asked him in a hoarse voice as Tae helped her to her feet.

“The mount was built by the priests of Jadus in the early days of the Allekhor Empire,” he replied, a question obvious in his voice. “Jadus was the patron of the empire just as he is for Sundabar.”

“Not the mount. The temple,” she said emphatically. “The dome in the Exultation Chamber was obviously built to be viewed from outside as well. That's why all the stairs by the entrances lead up and why only the central chamber leads down, because they built the mount around the original temple.”

Athena had removed herself from their discussion to kneel at Snow's side, kneading his fur as she slowly coaxed the change into his flesh. Carmen averted her eyes. The process was very disconcerting to watch.

“I don't know,” he said. “Not many records remain from the time of the empire. I always thought it was us who built the temple. Does it really predate the mount?”

“That purple spiral under the presbytery's rug,” Petra said, snapping her fingers. “That's what set you off!”

“It should have been gold. I might have understood silver for Isis, but neither deity has anything to do with purple.”

It will have to remain a mystery,” Edric said with a shrug. “Do you think it meaningful? Something the old ones left locked deep within the catacombs now free to make its way out into the world?”

“Nothing so dramatic,” Odette scolded. “It just seems odd, taking over someone else’s temple and then meticulously burying it under as much stone as humanly possible. And yet to leave it open for use under a different guise.”

“Maybe they just wanted to hide the evidence,” Petra said.

There was an unhappy neigh. All heads turned to where Athena stood, an unhappy gray horse shifting on his hooves beside her. The eyes were still Snow’s yellow, not the black of a true horse.

“Is that even safe?” Edric asked in a faint voice.

“Probably not for you,” Athena replied, swatting Snow’s hide as he snapped his teeth at the priest. Carmen noted the incisors were sharper than they should have been. The priest wisely scooted further away. “But Odette will be fine. Snow likes her. Or at least, is used to her and knows she isn't for the eating.”

“Your sense of humor leaves a bit to be desired, dear,” Tae said. “Quit scaring him. We need to escort him to the nearest town and it will be unpleasant if he spends the entire walk in fear of becoming the first person eaten by a horse.”

“Is it too late to say I would rather walk?” Odette asked rhetorically.

Mantha lit upon Snow's head, bending to nibble at the base of his ear. Snow shook his head and the little owl chirruped, wings spread as he tried to stay balanced. Athena set a gentling hand on Snow's head, reaching her other up to offer Mantha a less irritated perch.

“I don't really need the escort,” Edric said, his wide eyes still on the horse. 

“We bring an entire city block's worth of stone down in on itself using pitch, charcoal, and lightning and this is what throws you off?” Petra remarked snidely, making a 'get on with' motion to Carmen. Odette, watching the oncoming woodswoman, quickly detached herself from Tae's arm and limped her way towards Athena and Snow the horse.

Carmen let the sorceress beat her and watched with concerned amusement as Odette leaned tiredly against the horse. Snow turned his head to snort into her hair at this liberty.

“Oh, so you'll be fine on foot then?” Carmen asked pointedly.

Tae sighed. “A stiff breeze could knock her over. Really now, Odette, what were you trying to prove there?”

Carmen hefted Odette up to climb onto Snow's back. The sorceress hitched her gown's skirt up and out of the way, and Carmen patted her trousered leg patronizingly. “Did you really think I'd throw you on sidesaddle? Someone would have to walk beside you the entire time to keep you from pitching off. 'Tis no chance any of us will forget you've trousers on as well.”

“I perhaps worried too much about Petra’s involvement in the matter,” she replied, settling herself. Snow nudged his head into Athena's side, obviously wondering if a good raw boar was really worth this bother. “And walking about in a gown is bothersome without something to keep my legs warm.”

“And it keeps eyes from seeing more than they ought,” Athena added, turning towards the blushing priest, who had watched the entire charade with confusion. “You should stick with us for the walk. Get used to having people around again. How long were you in there by yourself?”

“Only a week or so, really. Helios Bertram and I stayed after everyone else left three weeks ago. But when the dome collapsed in our test, one of the columns landed on him. He was dead before it finished hitting the ground.” Edric had hunched into himself as he spoke. “He thought I was just frightened when I told him the alchemy room wasn’t the best place to run a trial test and that we should wait outside while it steeped. The ironic thing is, the office he wanted us to wait in went untouched in the fall. Took me some time to dig out the hall to get to it, though.”

“That’s awful,” she replied.

“Why did you stay behind?” Petra asked. “It wasn’t just out of the goodness of your hearts.”

“Petra,” Carmen hissed in warning.

“No, it’s all right,” the priest said, ducking his head. “Helios Bertram and I weren’t close. He had gotten guidelines for creating Havenite liquid fire and wanted to test it on the trolls. I stayed because he needed someone to look after him and most of the priests were family men. Or else had already gone into the catacombs with the sun-knights and the Lightbringer.”

“So it was not you testing a theory that brought the upper temple down. You instead got the theory from the accident,” Odette said from her perch.

“Helios Bertram was the one who was mad about alchemy. I thought I could use his mistake to seal up our temple so people could return to their homes if they wanted.”

“I don’t think they’ll want to,” Carmen said, looking back towards the city. “Just because the boat’s no longer on fire doesn’t mean it’s not still sinking.”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Petra said, starting down the road. “The sooner we drop young Edric off in Reeds, the sooner we can just mark this whole experience down as why we should not take jobs that look too good to be true.”

\----

Edric collapsed to the ground at Carmen's call for a halt for the day. Odette had been expecting both actions; Carmen had led them off the road some time ago, a sure sign of her looking for a campsite, and the young priest had wilted hours earlier and had been goaded on primarily by Petra’s constant chatter at his side. The young man was vain enough he did not like being outdone by a small girl at so a simple thing as walking. Especially in front of pretty women, as Petra had cuttingly pointed out in her native Kelathyl tongue when she noticed his labored breathing.

Edric, thankfully, had been too well-mannered to ask what her aside to Tae had been. Tae’s blush had given the wrong impression, no doubt why Petra had aimed it at her instead of the earthier Athena. The pretty wood-speaker was more used to male attention than her cousin and would have accepted Petra’s comment as if it were only her due. Tae, on the other hand, had formed a reply in Kelathyl, defending the uncomplaining priest. He was doing his best, after all. The alternating bilingual conversations had kept hyperactive Petra from getting too bored and starting arguments with everyone. Days when that happened always seemed twice as long as they had any right to be.

“How can you walk for this long without passing out?” Edric asked from where he lay spread eagle on his back to stare up at the darkening sky. Petra had pulled a small sling out and was slowly moving further away from them, scanning the underbrush for movement. She already had her mind on finding meat for supper.

“Don't stop moving or your muscles will cramp up,” Carmen scolded as she set her pack down.

“It takes a great deal of practice,” Athena said, shooting him a smile as she moved to Tae's side, hands reaching for the hidden straps that kept her armor together. Over the years, the women had gotten so much practice that any of them could be blindfolded and still help Tae out of her armor easily. Carmen was typically the one called on in the morning to tighten the straps, her sword-callused hands the strongest of the group. Petra had the bad habit of tickling Tae, which had caused the healer to swear off asking the redhead for help, undeniably the girl’s plan all along.

“I don't think I can get back up,” the priest said, rolling his head to watch the busy half-elves.

Carmen moved over to where he lay and reached a hand down for him to grab. “You’ll not be well pleased in the morn if you fall asleep there,” she said when he looked up at her. “You be unused to the same exercise we get.”

Odette carefully slid down from Snow’s side, a pained look on her face. Mantha chirruped in complaint before taking off, annoyed at the movement. “Riding without a saddle is very unpleasant,” she complained as she walked in a bow-legged fashion over to Tae and Athena to help with the removal of her plate mail. She would have been less sore if she had walked, but her lungs had not been in a good enough state for it. Or so Tae's argument had gone. The half-elf took her area of expertise quite seriously, so Odette had declined to make a fuss about it. If Athena felt Snow was up to the challenge, who was she to argue? Now, though, she- and, more specifically, her lower regions- had wished she had fought harder against it.

She took Tae’s gauntlets from her, freeing the half-elf up to work on the shoulder guards, and tossed them over to where Carmen’s pack lay.

“You had the blanket,” Athena said, pausing in her work to scratch a hand down Snow’s head. He had followed closely behind Odette, eager to silently ask the wood-speaker to return him to his natural form. “’Twas all we had to pass for a saddle.” She bowed her forehead to Snow’s. “Some patience please, dearest,” she murmured before returning to the breastplate’s straps.

Snow made an unhappy snorting noise, and moved to where Athena’s pack lay, sticking his nose in and snuffling about inside it. He was probably hungry. Odette was not certain how the carnivorous wolf would deal with a stomach that only required plants. He certainly had not tried to eat while they were walking.

“Do you need a hand?” Edric offered, once again on his feet. Carmen was prodding him in the back, trying to get him to stand up straighter. Edric kept inching away, trying to get away from her. Carmen was having none of that until his posture improved and was not letting him maintain any distance.

Torn between sympathy and amusement at his plight, Odette shook her head.

“We will be fine,” Tae said, her voice muffled as Athena and Odette lifted the breastplate over her head.

“Two is really as many as can help without everyone getting in each others' way,” Athena continued, taking a step back as Odette released the weight of the armor into her hold.

“It does look intangling.” he said, finally giving in and standing up straight. He moved away from Carmen and her overwhelming good intentions. She looked pleased at this minor show of a backbone and followed after Petra. He watched her progress for a moment. “Should I help with-”

“Best not,” Tae cut in, bending to work on her leg guards. “They can be very competitive over the matter of who can bring back an animal first. I would not put it past either of them to send a pellet your way to keep you from tramping about.”

“Then is there anything I can help with?” His voice crackled with frustration.

Odette sympathized with him. They had been on the road so long that everyone already knew their assigned tasks for setting up camp and did not need any help.

“You might tell us a bit about yourself,” Tae offered. She sat to struggle out of the boots while Athena piled the armor in one spot, taking care to place the pieces in the order they would go back on.

“What is there to tell?” he asked. “You already know I work with temple records, and as for my personal tale-” he shrugged. “Most Jaden laity comes from the orphanages they run. I'm no different.”

“How would we know that though?” Athena asked. “We're not from around here.”

“That explains the odd outspeech,” he said with a grin.

Athena and Tae exchanged looks.

“I think he meant accent,” Odette clarified in their native Brygean tongue, before swapping back to Allekheirn so Edric could follow the conversation. “I really should update the translation spell.”

“Well, when you use pirate’s speech for the base,” Athena trailed off with a giggle.

“I am sure they were all honest seamen.”

“Only because they were flying Biar colors,” Odette said dryly. “I would rather not think about what would have happened if they had not picked up enough passengers for the transoceanic voyage.”

“You come from so far away?”

“From Prospector’s Folly,” Odette explained. “Across the ocean and almost a hundred kilometres inland. Folly is a large city, but I doubt anyone on Caldonia has heard of it.”

“Someone has,” Athena murmured. “Else we would not be here.”

“It would have to pay very well to bring you so far,” Edric mused.

“’Tis no job that brings us here,” Athena corrected. “A friend of ours disappeared and his trail led here.”

Edric cocked his head to the side. “And he did not come here willfully?”

“He would no sooner willingly abandon us than Tae would forswear the Protector,” Odette said. “Crunch has no one but us and keeps every promise he makes. He told us to meet him by a certain day, and after the third day went by with no word from him, we went looking to see what had happened.”

“Possibly a bit too energetically,” Tae added. “I am certain the young man whose arm Carmen broke did not really mean to spike Crunch’s ale.”

“Ha,” Carmen retorted as she reappeared from the brush, a brace of rabbits hanging limply by their ears from one hand. Petra trotted along behind her, hands empty, but grinning suspiciously wide. “He’s lucky I dinna break his kneecaps as well, the scalawag. A barkeep should be trusted to not mess about with the sanctity of a man’s drink.”

“So yes, we are certain he did not come here of his own free will,” Odette said. “It is a bit difficult to make such decisions while unconscious. We could not find the ship that took him aboard, but he seemed to have escaped some time after reaching port.”

“I don’t understand why he didn’t find a ship headed back east,” Petra interrupted. “Wandering off westward was foolish, even for him.”

“He’s no sense of direction,” Athena commented. She knelt a short distance away with Snow, who was back in his proper wolf shape. Odette had picked up some understanding of lupine body language over the years she had known the wood-speaker and her companion and it was easy to see how overjoyed Snow was about the change. “Mayhap he thought he’d been transported east of where he had been.”

“’Tis possible. Or else the drugs left him too addled to note direction.”

“He also wouldn't understand a word anybody was saying,” Petra added. “There were plenty of people in Biar who spoke Brygean, but I haven't heard a word of it from the natives since we left the Free Coast.”

“A fair point,” Odette murmured. “His grasp on language confuses native speakers, never mind those who pick it up later in life. Even in Free Coast ports, he would not have found many who could truly understand him.”

“Whose turn is it for supper?” Carmen proffered the rabbits to Odette, who stood closest.

“I could take care of that,” Edric said. “So long as you not comment on the women’s work.”

The women exchanged blank looks. Odette had never heard of work determined by sex until arriving on Caldonia. It had not been truly noticeable in the Free Coast, and in Valencia both sexes were equally obsessed with frippery, but in the places they had stopped in Sundabar, there were very firm lines drawn between what men and women could and could not do.

“’Tis not women’s work,” Carmen said. She sat down, setting the rabbit carcasses down in front of her, and drew her hunting knife. Meat preparation was frequently left to her. Neither Athena nor Petra ate it, and Tae was remarkably squeamish about dissecting animals for one who so often had to sew people back up. Odette at least had being city-bred to account for not knowing how to perform the task. “’Tis work that needs must be done, no matter who does it.”

Edric did not look convinced.

“Are you going to start complaining about Carmen and me hunting for supper?” Petra asked. She was clearing brush from a relatively flat stretch of ground, setting it up for a fire pit. Mantha supervised from a nearby scrub bush, a dragonfly wing sticking incongruously from his beak.

“You’re crazy foreigners,” he said in a more serious tone than Odette would have liked. “As a member of the laity, I’m supposed to be setting an example-”

“Hogwash,” Carmen said. She punctuated her remark with a moist ripping noise, followed quickly by another. Odette hid a shudder and resolutely kept from looking that way. Edric looked a little green himself.

“Let’s agree not to discuss our opinions on your controlling god and what your elders feel you should be doing and we’ll all get along better,” Petra said. “We’re not changing faiths any time soon.”

“I fail to understand why a god with as knowledgeable a consort as Isis would create such division between the sexes as to tell them what is not allowed of them,” Odette said. 

“'Tis almost as if they do not want their people to get along with each other,” Carmen said.

“Divide and conquer,” Petra murmured in Brygean, her eyes on Edric. The look in them was calculating, and Odette wondered what new puzzle the young elf was turning over in her head.

The young priest looked uncomfortable with the line of thought the conversation was heading down. The laity were probably not supposed to be the ones dealing with outspoken unbelievers and he likely would not know the arguments he was supposed to present them to swing them around to his faith.

“Let us agree not to discuss religion at all,” Tae said as she stretched her limbs. “It will make for more peaceable conversation. We have no interest in Jadus, and I am certain Edric has no interest in breaking his vows and taking a different patron. It does not matter the god to know good deeds from poor, and Edric has done better than many of his fellows at abiding by those greater rules.”

“How would we even make fun of your cooking?” Athena asked, looking up from where she had been tussling with Snow.

There was a short silence. Petra snickered. “I can’t tell if she didn’t follow the conversation or if she’s just hungry and trying to be subtle.”

“What is it you normally do for supper?”

“Stew tonight,” Petra pronounced from her finished fire pit. “The vegetables would only have gone to waste back in Khoresbar.” She started emptying one of her many belt pockets and Odette chuckled as Edric went wide-eyed at the sheer volume of food she was producing.

“She is too small to carry much,” Odette explained. “One of her first investments was a belt enchanted with pockets to hold more than they ought. The lack of a backpack also means she can scamper about quicker. I am not certain which of these was her major reasoning.”

Petra grinned at her. Odette diplomatically did not mention the other things that ended up in Petra’s fathomless pockets. It was a habit that they by turns scolded her for and let her indulge in. The items her light fingers picked up were frequently useful, and her companions had at least instilled some sense of personal property into the girl.


	3. The Wasteland

“Tell me you didn’t,” Carmen said with exasperation. “Petra, the entire point of a courier job is to not touch the messages.”

“I didn’t read it on the way over,” Petra said. “He brought it with him to the house. And left it right there on the table.”

“It should have been obvious those were his messages from his sister,” Odette scolded. “Honestly, Petra, what are we going to do with you?”

“It was addressed to me,” the redhead replied, unimpressed.

After dropping the lay priest off in Reeds, the band of women had started for the Telubrin border, following yet another rumor of a gray-hued beast of a half-orc. There couldn’t be all that many on Caldonia, they reasoned, since the mountain range the first orcs had hurled themselves down from was half a world away. The people they had spoken to about Crunch knew of the race only through the stories of minstrels and sailors.

“Oh really?” Carmen said, disbelief thick in her voice.

The redhead pulled a folded-up sheet of paper out of one of her many pockets. “I even kept it for proof.” She scowled at it. “I hate being told I’m going to do something. Her message wasn’t really all that long.”

“So why mention it now?” Tae asked from where she strode beside Athena.

“Because we don’t have Edric with us anymore, obviously. I know it was addressed to me, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have gotten upset with me going through his things.”

Carmen and Odette pinched their noses almost in unison. “Petra,” Carmen dragged out her name.

“Death waits for you in Telubra,” Petra said, tossing the paper to Odette.

“Me?” The sorceress bobbled the letter before managing to grab onto it.

“She just said ‘you’, nothing specific.” Petra kicked a pebble down the road. “I hate diviners. They think they’re so mysterious, when really they’re just useless until after the fact. Why do they even bother?”

“She must have addressed it to Petra because even without the gift, ‘tis easy to tell she’ll have her nose in everybody’s things,” Carmen said, trying to read the short letter as Odette unfolded it. Odette nudged her with her elbow, wanting some space.

“Anything interesting?” Athena asked. 

Odette cleared her throat, and started to read. “Teugyrlel-”

“You mangled that horribly,” Petra interrupted. “It’s Toy-ghir-lil, not Tie-ger-lil.” She enunciated each vowel slowly, as if teaching a small child a new word and its proper pronunciation.

“Obviously why you translated it to Moonhawk for those of us without your gift of tongues,” Odette said, raising an eyebrow at the interruption.

“Sorry, sorry, please, continue.”

“Teugyrlel,” Odette repeated. Her enunciation was even worse, Athena noted. “I can see your sorceress reading this letter, but I saw you pick this up, so take that as you will. To thank you for saving my brother- though really, I can only assume this is so, he is too dear to my heart for me to distance myself enough to view him in my visions, but Selene Ysmay tells me this will pass, should all go well- I have a warning for you. I do not know if this is a true seeing or one you can change, but I must at least try to return the favor. Death waits for you in Telubra. I do not know why you go there, only that you must. And you will find what you seek. Death will find you first, though. Be careful, Ailith.”

Athena crinkled her nose up. “So Crunch will be in this town we're headed for?”

Petra kicked another pebble down the road. “Or he's there right now and dies before we get there. Or one of us dies before we find him. Or it's a metaphorical death and Tae decides she'd rather be a priestess of Elisar Ibryiil instead of the Protector-”

“I would rather chew glass,” Tae interrupted. Petra shot her a wicked grin.

“That goes for the rest of us,” Athena said. “Just because you chose the Court's god of mischief for your patron doesn't mean we want him as one.”

“Some of us also would not be accepted as worshipers by the Court,” Odette pointed out. The pantheon of the Court was for those of fey heritage and neither Carmen nor Odette would be wholly welcomed, even if they were sincere in the request.

“Have you ever wondered if the different pantheons' gods were just different aspects of one true set of gods?” Carmen asked.

“No,” Tae said shortly. “The Protector's symbol may be the sun, but he and Jadus are two totally different gods and I will thank you to not mention it again.”

“Sorry,” Carmen said.

“I apologize for snapping,” Tae said, reaching a hand forward to tap on Carmen's elbow in a placating manner. “I can be too defensive about my choice.”

Athena slipped her hand into Tae's. She aborted a motion to jostle Tae's shoulder, not wanting to bruise herself on the other blonde's armor. “He's a guardian, cousin. You're a healer willing to throw yourself between someone and danger. It's a perfect match.”

“We should still be careful in Telubra,” Odette said, returning them to the conversation they had been having before getting sidetracked. “Helios Edric said his sister's vision was the best the Isadors had to offer and it would not be wise to ignore her warning.”

“He also said that visions from Isis were often of things we could change through foreknowledge and free will,” Athena said. “We were already going to be careful entering Telubra. There aren't many precautions we can take. And Tae will do her best to keep us alive. Right, cousin?”

Tae squeezed her hand in acknowledgment. “And what if it is me who dies, dear?”

“I'll ask the spirits to reincarnate you. They like me.”

“As much as I dislike breaking up this macabre little heart-to-heart, I'd just like to say,” Petra swept her arms grandiosely before her, “welcome to Heron’s Rest.”

It was a village. Or it had been a village at its peak. The houses were placed lengthy distances apart, wide fields of crops separating them. To the west, there was a cluster of buildings a good distance from a lake. The land, like it had been since a few kilometres past the Telubrin border, was dry and cracked, only the hardiest of crops growing from it. The houses were drab and dark. As far as Athena could tell, the only reason the villagers hadn't given up and moved to better climes was the lake. She could tell it was drying up- the buildings near the lake had likely once been waterfront. With another few years without rain and the villagers making huge demands of it, it would be as dry and barren as the rest of the land.

“They've been reduced to subsistence farming,” Carmen said, her nature-wise eyes obviously seeing the same thing Athena did.

“Something tells me they don't have an inn for us to stay in for the night,” Petra said. “Nor would money to stay in a barn be of much use to them.”

“We could barter something,” Athena hesitantly brought up. “It won't solve their problems forever, but betwixt the two of us, Carmen and I could coax the land to grow greener crops for a time. They'll starve afore their next winter lets up, elsewise.”

They turned to approach the cluster of buildings. Athena could make out the sign of the sun on one- a sure sign of a temple dedicated to Jadus- and another had the basic appearance of a general goods store. There actually was an inn, though it was in such a state of disrepair Athena didn't think there were actually any rooms to let.

“We ain't got nothing fer da selling,” said a bored-looking man sitting on the front step of the store. He was chewing on a blade of wheat. He was obviously trying to play up the yokel as thickly as he could for their benefit. Athena wasn’t terribly impressed. “Soldiers already made off wi' da works six months back and dere's been no merchant 'vans since.”

“We were hoping to rest someplace for the night,” Odette told the man. “It has been a long walk from Khoresbar.”

“Didn't know anybody was left dere,” he said indifferently. “Big mess of 'em came by 'most a month back. Didn't stop, jes' kept rolling right on to Felaya furder north. Didn't talk much either, jes' said trolls was invading and dey'd drudder face da soldiers 'cause dey leastwise wouldn't eat 'em.”

“There are not many people left,” Odette replied vaguely. “The trolls looked to be run back into their caverns, but the drought will probably keep the ‘Barens from going back.”

“Da soldiers’ll draft 'em afore dey let 'em back across da border. What sort of trade ya got fer beds? Don't need no money, not wi’ da 'vans stopped.”

“We have a wood-speaker. She might speak to your crops.”

His woebegone slouch vanished and he squinted his eyes narrowly. “Nature witches? Why ya traveling by foot? Ya could magic yerselves ter where ya wants.”

“We're looking for someone,” Athena explained. “We can only follow his trail by keeping to his footsteps.”

He noticed Athena's canine shadow. “Sniffing him out den, eh? Best o' luck wi' that. Dem ‘Barens covered it, more like as not. But we could use da help wi’ da crops. Seems lahk da soil jes' dies unner 'em. Was planning on sending m'boy up to Felaya to try an’ trade fer food, fer we ain't growing enough fer da lean season.”

“We could tell,” Carmen said sympathetically. “And while we cannot do it for everyone's fields, if ye could pick out the ones that will have the least yield, Athena and I will try to fix things up a bit for ye.”

He scratched his chin. “Best talk to Yates,” he said. “He knows jes' about everyding about da fields and been complaining da loudest about da soil. He'll know who's treated der fields worst and worked ‘em too hard to produce anything but dust.”

Athena shook her head. “We can't do anything about the dead ones.”

The man shrugged. “Yates is still yer man. He's da only one looking at having enough for winter an’ more like as not, he an’ his will be working yer fixed fields.“

“Which house is his?”

“Head nor’east a bit an’ look fer a real green house. Had his boys paint up t’ place to keep 'em out o’ trouble during da winter last year. Hadn't nudding better to do, an’ da drought's done away wi’ da snow too.”

“Much obliged,” Odette thanked the man.

“Jes' tell him Galfrid sent ya or he'll be running ya offa his land. Real worried about someone taking what crops he's managed ter grow.”

They continued their northerly trek. After around twenty minutes, Athena understood why the man's directions were just to 'look for a real green house.' She wasn't certain that color could be found in nature.

“That has got to be the hugest eyesore for ninety kilometres,” Petra said in an awed voice. “That man must hate his neighbors. And his kids.”

“And his lot in life,” Carmen added in a dour voice before grinning. “He's got to get his kicks in somewhere.”

Barring the unfortunate paint job, the farmhouse was a testament to the original owner's ability to build. And his paranoia. It looked to originally be a bastle house- the main portion of the building was a three story stone monstrosity with a few arrow slits to act as windows and exterior stone steps to the second story. Additions had been made to the house over time, judging by the different materials of stone used. They had not been so severely defensive in their design, but the sheer size of it loomed down upon them.

There was no barn for the animals, so Athena could only assume the ground floor of the house had been devoted to their stabling. Considering the civil war the country was currently embroiled in, it was a wise decision. The troops couldn’t take what they couldn’t see. Athena thought a barn for camouflage wouldn't have hurt, but wood was obviously too scarce a commodity for it.

“He's not built to withstand a siege, but it's a close thing,” Petra said as they overcame their shock and continued up to the house.

A tall sturdily-built man appeared at the top of the stairs. He had his arms crossed over his chest and glowered down at them.

“I'll ask ya once to get off my land,” he shouted down without preamble.

“Galfrid sent us,” Carmen hollered back.

“And what's that drunken sad sack of lumps want?” he said, not looking any more inclined to welcome them.

“'Tis more what we can do for ye, sir,” Athena said, stopping close to the stairs. “We be needing a place to stay for the night and, knowing ye've no need of money, we thought to bargain in trade.”

His head moved from one woman to the next.

“Two of us be nature witches,” Carmen added before he could say something insulting. Athena winced at the horrible name, but erroneous though it might be in Carmen’s case, it was at least descriptive.

“And you'll freshen my crops for a bed for the night?” he questioned, disbelief evident.

“Not yours, good sir,” Athena replied, shaking her head. “Ye’ve taken good care of your fields. The work is best on something worse off, since using it on either your good crops or your neighbor’s poor crops would produce the same yield.”

“Then why’d that rascal Galfrid send ya to me?” His silhouette had lost some of its tenseness and he came down the stairs to stand directly in front of them. Up close, he was still just as huge, and his bushy beard only added to it.

“He felt you would know whose crops we should work on,” Odette said. “When times are tough like this, the entire community must pull together to survive, and while it may be one man’s land that we change, the crops we work on would have to be split among everyone.”

“Ya’ve obviously seen how right poorly neighbors are when nobody has a thing and everyone fights to hold what they do got. I knows a couple who are poor farmers but goodly folk who will let others work their land so that everybody will have stores for the winter. Still seems an awful lot of work for just a night’s rest.”

Carmen shrugged. “‘Tis the skills we have that ye need. If ye had plague, we have a healer, but ye have drought. We cannot bring back the rains, but we can strengthen some crops back to the yields of the good times.”

He scratched his beard, thinking the matter over, and then seemed to come to a conclusion. “Let me go and speak with the others then. Have Galfrid set ya up in the public house for a meal while ya wait.”

“Thank you for your time,” Odette said to the man before they turned to leave.

Athena watched him cut across his fields. “Should be interesting,” she said as they headed back to the road.

“Boring, you mean,” Petra finally spoke up. “Give me some place with a sign of life any day. These people have been beaten down so far they’ve no spark left to speak of.”

“War does that. There is nothing we can do about it but try and stay away from the fighting,” Odette told her.

“No problem there. We’re going through the dry lands and most of the fighting is further east where the weather hasn’t completely gone all to hell yet.”

“Is it just bad weather or is the drought the sign of a ritual working?” Tae asked.

“There is no way of telling,” Odette replied. “My personal belief is that it was a working of rain someplace else that messed up weather patterns, but it might just be bad weather. It certainly is not someone actively taking the rain from the area to use- this area was not known for its rains to begin with. Nor is there anything here that could give a weather-worker cause for vendetta.”

“Unless all of Telubra has this weather,” Carmen pointed out. “One of the spirits might have shown its displeasure in the civil war by taking away the things that made Telubra a place one would like to live.”

Athena shook her head in disagreement. “The weather gets worse the further north you go. The lowlands are where they are fighting.” She wasn’t entirely certain about the truth of her statement. The poor weather in the north was obviously tied to one of the earth spirits bound there, but the greater earth spirit that oversaw all of Telubra could have stopped it had it desired. Its lack of action said a great deal about its feelings about the warfare in the east though.

“What happened to the weather really isn’t important to us,” Petra said. “A better question is how bad the fighting will be when we turn and start heading east.”

“We should be safe so long as we are careful. Most of the fighting is in the south, though there is some along the eastern border. You remember the Berungan border guards that turned us back from Telubra on our original journey across, do you not?” Odette paused as Mantha took the opportunity to leap from her shoulder, speeding towards a mouse they had frightened into the open.

Tae took up where she left off. “They said the entire length of their border seemed to be one big battle. And the commander thought it could be a feint so the Telubrins could cross and start conquering Berunga. Either it was, and the Telubrin soldiers are busy fighting in Berungan territory, or it was not, and the soldiers are busy fighting each other in Telubrin territory. So that leaves few here in the west to fight.”

“Judging by the contenders for the throne,” Petra said sourly, “they may well think a fourth participant needed in their bloodshed. If the Telubrin king had had the good sense not to foster his sons in Valencia, this wouldn’t have happened. But Valencian nobility is trained from birth to be vipers, and they taught the Telubrin heirs the same dirty tricks without teaching them the number one rule- don’t touch royalty. You don’t kill your king; you throw the other contestants for the throne into a nasty smear campaign that makes you the logical choice as heir.”

“The former king was not one to inspire respect to begin with,” Odette said. “A land is tied to its king. If it is a bad king, the land will not flourish. This drought has been going on for years, but it has only been two since the king was assassinated.”

They had arrived back at the general store. The man on the steps looked like he had not moved at all in the hour they had been gone.

“Ya found him then? Yates set ya a’rights?” He asked by way of greeting.

“He went to speak with the other farmers,” Odette explained. “He asked us to wait in the public house while they came to their decision.”

He eyed the abandoned-looking inn. One of the upper story’s loose shutters slipped off its top hinge and creaked noisily before catching against something and holding still. “They do have good vittles,” he said slowly. “But da rooms ain’t been open to let in a dog’s age. Ya don’t plan on staying there, do ya?”

They looked the dilapidated building over for a moment, and then Carmen spoke what they were all certainly thinking. “I’d rather sleep on an anthill.”

“Verra wise,” he said with a wide grin. “Mal’s a good cook, but he ain’t rented out rooms since his wife died nigh on twenty years ago. She wore da pants in tha’ marriage and did alla da repairs and housekeeping. No telling how big da mice nests in those beds are. But I suppose Yates was right to send ya thar to eat. Only other place to eat is Geva’s an’ she don’t hold wi’ spices.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Petra said.

\----

Odette watched Athena and Carmen pace the borders of the first of the three fields that had been chosen as the most under-utilized while still salvageable. At the advice of Yeoman Yates, Lucas- a sheepish-looking young man whose parents had moved to the village fifteen years ago- had planted the more drought-resistant barley wiser farmers used -but had let weeds overgrow large swatches of it, choking out the less hardy barley. He had also somehow managed to over-hydrate one large section. The plants there were yellow and wilted, possibly already dying from root rot as the water took up all the space in the parched soil that the roots needed.

The wilted plants were left alone at Athena's instruction, while Yates had gotten his boys- twin teenagers with identical surly slouches- to pull the weeds out overnight. They were currently seated on Lucas’ porch on opposite sides, studiously ignoring each other while simultaneously taking turns to peg each other with small stones when one’s head turned too far to see the other.

“I see why you had them paint the house,” Odette murmured to the big farmer as a pebble missed and went clattering noisily on the ground. “They have the boundless energies of youth and all the spitefulness of someone with a sibling who always gets the good presents.”

“They’re a right handful, they are. Good lads, though, and hard workers. They just can’t be left idle too long or they’ll have tussles over imagined wrongs,” he replied. “They didn’t mind being turned out of their beds for the work. They’ll probably be arguing over which of ya slept in which bed afore the day is out.”

Odette rolled her eyes and he laughed. “Ye may not have ever been that age, my lady, but I was and I’m not blind now. Two beds, five women? They’ll be fighting over the whole matter for months.”

Odette diplomatically let the topic of conversation drift. “The beds were much appreciated. I know Tae was tired of having to put her armor on in the morning after sleeping on rocky ground and Petra certainly felt more at ease staying in your bastle house than in that abominable public house.”

“Was only too happy to oblige, what with what yer girls be doing now.” He nodded towards the two woodswomen, who had finished their circuit and were crouched on the ground, tracing something into it, murmuring softly.

They looked to be still in their planning stages. It would be a complicated working. They would have to pull the nutrients from deeper in the soil, or else infuse it from their own energies, though that would leave less for them to use with the second part- coaxing the plants to maximize their yield upon maturity. They would also have to ration the energies they expended on the effort- there were still two more fields to do.

“Where did the other two go?” he asked, interrupting her thoughts.

“The temple,” she replied. “Tae to offer her respects, Petra to dig through their archives if the priest will let her.”

“Helios Osgar don't do much record keeping past deaths, births, and marriages,” he told her with a confused look. “And land surveys. Knowing where to stop planting be important. Silly to waste wood on fences, so we use stone and there are some that'll try moving the stone markers to make their property larger.”

“I think she was actually interested in the religious texts. We came across a spiral pattern in an abandoned temple and could not tell who it was dedicated to. She gets curious about these things and frankly, this business bored her. If you think your sons are bad, try a young elf with a penchant for legerdemain. She had Tae thinking a mouse had gotten trapped in her armor.”

“She's a witch too?” he asked, surprised. “Seems a mite small for it. Don't dress to look it either. Dresses like a caravaner, all those layers.”

“Size does not relate to power when it comes to magic. She dresses that way because she gets cold very easily. Little people, you know,” she explained with a smile, “no insulation to speak of.”

He tugged on his great beard. “'Tis true. When my boys were small, they were never happy in winter unless they were curled up in the fire.”

She laughed at the image. “That must be why it is her element of choice, then. If you do not mind my asking, how do you folks plan on working these fields?”

“Galfrid's kin have agreed to look after the fields for Deril's lands- he and his will be working this one and teaching Lucas the proper care procedures, the damn fool. For all that they're citified folk, Galfrid and his kin don't have bad farming habits to break and follow directions well. And they know how important it is to have as much extra stores as possible. There's no sign of the drought ending and we can't hope for good folk like you to come along again.”

“Not until the fight for the throne is over,” Odette agreed. “And maybe having a king will help the land.”

He shrugged, not persuaded. “Our kings have never been proper land-kings. Time was when this land was green and beautiful, but it ain’t been that way for generations. The kings of the east don’t care about the miseries this side of the Bodach Range. ”

As a man of the earth, he would know better than she what the Telubrin land felt about its rulers. She dropped the subject. “What about the other two fields?”

“My daughters will work my fields while the boys and I do Willard's. I don't trust him not to sneak out in the night and make 'corrections'. He don't hold with advice and his papa did him a bad turn sending him to Hallovar for learning. He keeps growing wheat, though he knows 'tis drought and the crops will be sickly, because that's what Hallovar teaches because those eastern farmers grow wheat. There ain't no use telling him we've different weather and land here in the west. And he pays no mind to the fact they sell most of their wheat to the city folk and live on potatoes.”

“The weather is so different there?” Odette asked, surprised. “I know the mountains do strange things with it-”

“Rains mostly come from the east. So their side gets plenty and then it hits the mountains and stops, so we gets to make do with what manages to make it across Sundabar without clearing. Was never much to start with, but now we get none.”

“And for Giles?”

“His field wouldn't be so bad if he hadn't have broke his legs right afore planting season. He's too proud to ask for help and his young'uns did the best they could with his directions, but he couldn't actually get out there to stop them when they started going wrong. With yer healer laying hands on him, he can take care of his own fields. Gran'ther Regenwald said he'll keep an eye on him, just in case, so that one's no cause for worry.”

“He is lucky that wall collapsing on him didn't break his back. Likely if he had been a few steps backwards, it would have killed him.”

Yates snorted. “That's his sort of luck. Fer sure, the wall didn't break his back. But if the wall had fallen five seconds later, he wouldn't have been hurt at all. He's unlucky. If he were luckier, his bad luck would kill him. Instead, his bad luck makes his life miserable.”

Carmen and Athena finished their discussion. Athena was scrounging through her backpack, likely looking for tools for the ritual, and Carmen stalked off towards the center of the field. Athena found what she was looking for. It seemed to be a bundle of small sticks.

“Woodworkers, eh?” Yates said, seeing the same thing. “She won’t be growing trees out there?”

“Nothing of the sort. Trees have long roots though, and I think nature magic uses that symbolically. Rather than skimming the surface like a small plant, they, will draw power from deep underground like a tree would. She is likely deciding which type of wood will work best. They have different strengths.” Odette doubted a lecture on nature magic was really what the man needed, not that she knew more than the general basics Athena and Carmen had explained over the years.

“So there’s a reason the sun-priests always insist on an oak altar for their festivals? Wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep burning the damn things at the end. Helios Osgar always waves around a birch wand for blessing the fields.”

Odette cocked her head, thinking it over. “Basically. I do not know the reasoning behind which wood is best for what occasions. Oak is strength, of course. The enduring light of the sun. Birch could be for growth. Athena will likely have Carmen use that, while she uses one for healing.”

“‘Tis all beyond my ken. I’ll not argue with the experts. If they was to dance naked and throw peppers, I wouldn’t disagree with them. Talking with the spirits of things is their calling and they will know what be needed.”

“I doubt there will be any dancing involved,” Odette said dryly as they watched Athena start to walk the perimeter of the field again, wand in hand. She occasionally stopped to place light fingers down among the yellowed plants. Odette could not tell what the blonde was doing- looking for something, or perhaps marking something.

“A shame that,” he said, eyes admiring Athena’s curvaceous figure. “‘Tis for the best, I suppose.”

“Indeed. Your wives would be outraged and we would be run out of the village before we finished.”

“Only too true,” he said with a sigh. “I should get the lads back to the house for naps or they’ll sleep through the working hours tomorrow. And I know yer girls would prefer not to have watchers. Ye witches can be mighty secretive and I’d rather they not ask ye to turn me into a hare for bothering their working.”

Odette chuckled. “I would not tell your young men they need to take naps. At that age, their pride is so easily wounded.”

\----

Heron’s Rest’s temple to Jadus was a larger affair than expected. It had one large chamber for worship and a small three-roomed wing, giving the building an L-shape. One room had been remodeled into a living space for the temple’s sole priest, complete with a small stove for cooking. Another was set up as a private chamber for meeting with the priest one-on-one. The third was filled with cluttered bookshelves, with a small desk and chair shoved into one corner.

It was to this third room the snowy-bearded priest had led Petra and Tae at Petra’s request to view the records. The priest had shown little interest in their reasons, saying that the only reason they even kept the old records was for visiting Jaden clerics. Locals had no interest in the past beyond if family lines were far enough apart and where property lines were supposed to be.

“So what are you looking for?” Tae asked, peering at the papers Petra had pulled out of the temple’s small archives.

“That spiral design. I think it’s related to the beast that was driving the trolls out. Here, flip through these. Set aside anything that looks useful.” Petra passed Tae a sheaf of papers brittle with age.

She glanced at the one on top. It was full of cramped squiggles running down the page. “I cannot read this.”

Petra shot a glance at the sheet and shrugged, unconcerned. “I doubt there’s anyone alive who can read that. But it’s got some illustrations. It looks like all the really ancient papers are written in it. High Allekheirn or some such. The newer ones are in the current tongue. The original Allekheirn language was apparently lost some time during the rise of the empire.”

Tae skimmed the papers, carefully setting them down as she finished each sheet. “Did you just grab everything you could find or was there a method to your madness?”

Petra grinned at her toothily and Tae half-expected her to say she just grabbed everything that wasn’t a list of dates. “Used a bit of magic to point me to anything older than two centuries. I’m not really expecting much, Heron’s Rest is far too small to really have anything interesting. But it was probably around back during the time of the empire, so there could be something here. Mostly though, it’s busy work. Watching Athena and Carmen set up for a nature magic ritual isn’t quite as boring as watching paint dry, its close.”

“Any reason for choosing things two centuries old? Allekhor collapsed long before that.” Tae set a page off to the side for a better inspection.

Petra carefully unfurled a scroll so old its lettering had almost completely faded. “Not really. I didn’t want to exclude anything the Telubrins might have discovered. Heron’s Rest’s shrunk- most village public houses don’t have rooms to let, so Heron’s Rest probably was a town at one time, with more than just one priest to serve the community. One of them might have been a history buff.” Petra extended the scroll to her. “Hold this open for me.”

Tae took the edges gently between her fingers. Petra held her hand over it, frowning with concentration. Color slowly bled back into the faded ink and Tae was surprised to see that the scroll she held looked freshly pressed and inked.

“It will only hold for an hour or so,” Petra said, seeing the look on her face. “But this one looked important.”

Tae peered over the scroll. It was written in the same language as the original paper she had looked at. “How are you going to read it?”

“Behta,” Petra spoke by way of answer. Tae watched the glyphs rearrange themselves into elven script. It was upside-down to her and she tilted her head, trying to read it.

“It’s a description of a battle that took place near here. Their dates don’t translate well- not unless this thing predates the empire,” Petra said with a frown. “I didn’t think there was civilization here that far back. Humans settled this continent from the one to the south. Their ancestors were good shipwrights. Well, thieves, really. The gnomes were the real shipbuilders.”

“Gnomes build ships?” Tae repeated. “I doubt they built the ships to human scale. How did the southerners get away with it?”

“I think the gnomes just wanted them out of their cities. The ancient southerners were basically a howling horde of barbarians, and gnomish civilization was at its peak at the time. If the Umberan gnomes hadn’t stuffed them onto ships, they would have sacked and burned the coastal cities. Or possibly burned, then sacked. Barbarian hordes aren’t that bright.”

“I guess that was clever of them,” Tae said, frowning. “Not that the history lesson is not nice, but is there anything actually of use on this scroll?”

“Maybe if we were archaeologists,” Petra said with a sigh. “There’s not a lot here about who the two opposing sides were. The author mostly just calls his adversaries the heretics.”

“That could be a good sign,” Tae pointed out.

“Only if he stopped recounting each individual contestant and mentioned who these heretics were the followers of.”

Tae pointed to one of the illustrations. “What about this step pyramid? Did any of the old gods use that as a symbol?”

“The ziggurat? You’d know better than me. Wonder why he drew it upside-down, though.” Petra gently took the scroll from her and rolled it back up. “So now that I’ve got you alone, would you care to explain why we’re dawdling here in the back of beyond? I know there’s a better reason than doing a good turn for these folks.”

“Mantha told Odette that someone has been tracking us. She thought we should wait for them to catch up to see what they wanted.”

“And if they have violent intentions?” Petra questioned, flipping idly through the papers she still had left.

Tae returned to her own stack of unintelligible scrawl to look for the spiral design that had Petra so interested. Nothing really popped out, though none of what was left was in the same ancient language. “Either they will wait for us to move on or we will be attacked someplace we have allies.”

“Now that’s thinking ahead,” Petra said approvingly. “Why didn’t you mention it to me?”

“You would have been even twitchier around the locals. And they would notice, Petra. Carmen and Athena just know that Odette wanted to take a break here. If they do not approach us by tomorrow, we will continue on to Felaya.”

“And then strike east to the Lothar Heights,” Petra murmured.

“Where hopefully we will find Crunch. How we will return to Folly is another matter entirely. Do we continue on the road east, across the jut of mountains that splits Telubra and chance the eastern battles or do we go south and chance those battles? The yeomen of the villages will not know where the heirs will move their battles. Probably wisest would be to take the shortest path back to Sundabar and retread our route through Valencia.”

“They won't be as nice to us coming from Sundabar as they were sending us. But their Telubrin border is even more fortified. All Caldonia seems to be going to hell in a hand basket. But none of that will matter if he isn't in Lothar either. What possessed him to wander this way?”

Tae shrugged. The workings of a half-orc mind were beyond her. “Do not be so pessimistic.”

“Plan for the worst,” Petra countered. “Be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't come to pass. Optimists get their hearts broken every day by wishing for the best.”

“That was uncalled for,” Tae said, hurt coloring her voice.

“Hells,” Petra said, running a hand through her hair. “I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm the weak link here, but I keep taking it out on the rest of you.”

“Bad memory affiliation. You have lost someone else,” Tae replied, setting aside the papers to lean against one unsteady bookshelf. At Petra's flinch and wide-eyed look, she added, “You occasionally ask the wrong questions for someone looking for a half-orc.” She pulled herself away from the bookshelf as it creaked suspiciously.

“I try to catch myself. I know he's not here,” she murmured. “It still doesn't mean I should take my frustration out on you.”

“Not really, no.” Tae agreed.

Petra reached over to look at the sole sheet Tae had removed from the papers she had been given. “Is this the only thing you could find?”

It was an obvious change in conversation, but Tae let it slide. “There was a spiral doodled up at the top. I doubt it has anything to do with temple in Khoresbar's former dedication.” She pointed at the drawing at the top. Its ink was not as faded as that of the rest of the document.

“There's another upside-down ziggurat,” Petra said, one finger tracing the design. “Do you think there's any relation?”

Tae wrinkled up her nose and took a few moments to think over the matter. Most gods used blatantly obvious symbols as their signs, or else themed ones- like the heavenly bodies of the Protector's Court, or the minerals of the dwarven Shield Brothers. The spiral could be viewed as a symbol of the sun, but the dark purple Odette and Petra had described it to be did not mesh with that idea. The pyramid was usually used as a symbol of wisdom, though the steps could mean that it related more to climbing. Inverting a symbol usually meant the opposite. But there was not a god of foolishness. Bad luck, perhaps?

She shook her head. “None that I can think of. But religion here is different. The major cities are the only places we have seen temples dedicated to a deity other than Jadus. It is possible there is a deity of this continent not known on our own.”

“Maybe it's not a symbol of a god,” the redhead mused. “What's the symbol for the kings of Telubra? No, that's a lion rampant. So unimaginative. Should we have the time in one of the big cities, I want to stop by a library. It could be it wasn't a temple at all, but some ancient duke or prince's house. Hopefully not, it's easier to find information on ancient religions than ancient insignificant nobility.”

“Do you think there is still time to catch Athena and Carmen's last ritual working? I find myself curious.”

“Probably. Let me put these papers back where I found them and then we can ask Galfrid which field they are in.”

\---

In the center of Yeoman Giles' field, Athena and Carmen sat cross-legged facing each other, their hands laid flat upon the earth.

“It gets easier to perform each time,” Athena said softly.

“But harder to find the strength,” Carmen replied. Unlike Athena, she had closed her eyes to concentrate. She was not as adept at wielding nature magic as the other woodswoman and needed as few distractions as possible.

“'Tis why I had us save this one for last. The first field had many things that needed help and the second one had weak soil. Giles is a good farmer who does his best to balance the need for crop rotation and the actual ability of the plants to grow in these horrid conditions. His major problem was telling his children to space the rows two steps apart. He is a grown man, and his eldest is only twelve.”

Carmen chuckled softly. “And the eldest three had split up the duties to plant the rows, so the spacing still isn't even, on top of the crops being much too closely planted.”

“'Tis a mistake he will never make again, at least. We have to coax alternate rows to return themselves to seed, and to return the nutrients they had used back to the soil. After that, 'tis only a matter of pulling nutrients up from the deeper soil for the plants to feed upon.”

“To return plants to seed form is hardly easy,” Carmen replied. “But ‘twill be easier than the work in the other fields was.”

“You already know how to do that,” the blonde replied. “Every woodworker with a basic magic ability is taught it. You needn't worry about knowing how to return them back to seed form in large numbers, I will guide the energies. I have already placed markers on each end of the rows we must remove. So, again, are you prepared?”

“Yes,” Carmen said with no doubt in her voice. She had the strength Athena would need from her to perform this. It was merely exhaustion that had colored her complaint.

“Then we begin.”

They recited the chant of rejuvenation and the air around them began to hum in anticipation as magic pooled under their hands. Carmen could feel the hairs on her neck stand up as Athena took control of the energies and reached mentally outwards to plants that blinked the merry pink of Athena’s personal energies. That was the marker the blonde had spoken of when she said she would know which rows to remove. Carmen could feel the energy being drawn from the plants as they slowly dwindled in on themselves, becoming just seeds, with only the potential for life.

Carmen did not have the training required to use the chant of rejuvenation and had only learned it now at Athena's insistence. So she was surprised when the energy from the plants integrated itself into to two of them.

“'Tis meant to be used for healing,” Athena explained softly as she worked. “But the plants are no longer properly alive, so the energy they have stored follows the magic that called upon it. We'll use the energy we are taking here to liven up the crops that remain.”

It was clever, but Carmen didn't think she could divide her attentions the same way Athena could and only nodded her understanding.

As they performed their working, there was only the whisper of the dry wind through the grassy-looking crop field. Carmen knew there were onlookers outside the boundaries Athena had asked them not to trespass beyond. Odette, of course, and Yeomen Yates and Giles. Giles' children had been corralled in his meandering farmhouse, to keep the youngest ones from investigating the strange doings. The elder two had complained bitterly about it, but had resigned themselves to child-watching duties. Tae might still be minding Petra in the temple, but she had mentioned wanting to watch one of the workings.

Carmen hadn't opened her eyes for the two previous workings, but the results she had seen once they completed their tasks were astounding. Both Lucas' barley fields and Willard's wheat fields had changed from sickly, thin, faded yellow stalks to lush, healthy, green stalks with faintly yellow tips- a sure sign of approaching ripeness.

The flow of energy from the plants trickled to a halt as the last of the crowded barley stalks curled up into seeds. Athena minutely adjusted her fingers to lie atop Carmen’s to keep her from lifting her hands up. The energy from the rejuvenation continued to slowly flow into them. Athena lifted her hands when it came to a stop and Carmen did the same. Neither of them bothered to brush the dirt off their hands- they would be repeating the move shortly, so it would be pointless.

Carmen felt as if she had had too many spirits as the energy from the working circled within her. She bit back a sudden urge to giggle, but only by taking a great swallow of air and huffing it out loudly.

“Do you want to rest for a bit before the next step?” Athena asked, her voice brimming with the heady rush of power. She was obviously feeling the same thing Carmen was.

“I feel fantastic,” the brunette replied, grinning, her eyes still closed. “Like I could run back to Khoresbar and drive off all those illegal squatter trolls by myself.”

“You won't by the time we're finished.” Carmen could hear the smile in Athena's gentle voice. “That energy is going right back to the crops, so you only think you're invincible.”

Carmen fidgeted where she sat, flexing her benumbed toes. “We should go ahead and get started now. Otherwise I’ll run off howling. I feel like a cup under a tap that can't shut off and I'm about to spill everywhere.”

“Hands back on the ground then, Carmen,” the blonde said with a musical laugh. “This will be the hard part.”

Carmen set her hands back onto the hard ground, still fighting not to giggle. She felt Athena slide her fingers in between hers as she placed her hands down as well.

“Feel the ground beneath you. You can feel how ill, how lacking it is, can't you? But deeper down, past the layer where the roots are, the earth is still rich and whole. It is there we will reach out to and request fresh life for these crops to feed the people of this village through the rough winter times.” Athena's voice was soothing and hypnotic.

The sound of the wind faded until all that was left of Carmen's senses was the feel of the dry loam underneath her hands. The rest of her attention was burrowing through the earth, root-like, tracing out the small cracks in the different layers of soil, reaching further and further until she came to bedrock.

The earth around her was filled with energy and the spark of life, just waiting for something to wend its way down here to draw upon it and ask for its aid. It wasn't anything like the other two fields they had worked with- those had had nowhere near the potential that this one did. Or perhaps they had, and this almost-aware energy had been too hidden for them to find and draw upon. Or perhaps the land here took joy in its cultivators and had sorrow for their plight and had merely been waiting for someone to ask for its help.

At this thought, Carmen tried to trace the size of this energy storage. A small portion of her stayed with Athena, knowing the other woodswoman was more experienced in these matters and if Carmen didn't, she could be lost forever down here.

It extended as far as her reach could go. And she knew, without a doubt, what this energy was. They had somehow chanced upon the power the earth retained for when a goodly king held the throne and treated his people and lands well. This was the reward, that if a king was good, his land would treat him and his people well. No wonder it seemed aware. This was not the dormant energy of the earth, but an earth spirit, perhaps even the great earth spirit of Telubra, slumbering while it awaited a new king. There was no telling how it would react to their request. She traced her path back to Athena as quickly as she could.

This is Telubra, she thought as loudly as she could at the other woman. There was no time for her to try and find her way back to her body and say it, though she knew the other woman had the experience to not be so tied up down here that she was unaware of her senses like Carmen was.

She didn't think Athena could hear her, though. Reading minds was not something practitioners of nature magic could do. She tried tugging on Athena's awareness, to show her the vastness of what they stumbled upon.

It was too late. Even as Athena let herself be drawn away from it, Carmen could feel the awareness move, slowly withdrawing tendrils from the bedrock it was anchored to. Alertness was building, like a hibernating bear woken deep in winter. They were held still as it moved around them, judging them. They were not its people, they had no right to call upon it, when there was not even a king to hold the throne. 

She throttled back on the terror she felt. They had come here for a good cause, they had not meant to delve so deeply that they trespassed upon this outcropping of the power of Telubra. The people of Heron’s Rest would not last the winter without better crops, not all of them at least. Any good person with the knowledge of nature would do their best to help these poor folk. They were not to blame for the hardships poor weather had thrust upon them and they were doing their best to survive.

Carmen didn't know what it discovered, but they were suddenly shooting upwards, breaking through stone and dirt and old decayed plant roots as the whole mass of awareness surged to the surface.

Carmen snapped her eyes open. Athena's pale face was directly in front of her, her eyes wide with fear. She grabbed the blonde's hands and pulled them both to standing. The ground was rumbling beneath them. She dragged the other woman towards the farmhouse, racing to beat whatever it was that was about to break out of the ground. Athena didn't try to break Carmen's tight grip on her wrist, just sprinted alongside of her as fast as she could. Grain stalks whipped around them as they sped through the field.

They were thrown forward to the ground as a loud explosion rocked the ground. The small section of Carmen's thoughts that wasn’t quivering with adrenaline and terror thought it was probably centered where they had been seated. Carmen threw her arms up over the back of her head as debris rained down on them.

“Do you hear water?” Athena gasped out when the falling debris stopped. She tried to rise up onto her knees, only to fall right back down, though from relief they weren't dead or utter exhaustion, Carmen couldn't tell.

With a great surge of exertion, Carmen managed to flip herself over onto her back. She couldn't see anything of the ground beyond the green barley growths they had landed in and that was only out of the corners of her eyes. What took up most of her vision was a great geyser of water shooting skywards, no end in sight.

The air around them misted from the excess of moisture in the air, but no water actually fell back down.

“That be a lot of water,” Carmen said, not really knowing what else could be said.

She could hear footsteps running towards them. Odette must have seen their sprint through the waist-high crops and its sudden halt, even if she couldn't actually see them anymore. Of course, everyone for ten kilometres had to have felt that.

Petra's face appeared over her. “What in the nine hells did you do?” she said, not even sounding out of breath. “Tae and I saw the results on the other two fields and they look nothing like this. That's not even water, you know. Well, this mist is.” She waved her hand through the air, her sleeves darkening with moisture. “That thing, though. That's so much energy spewing that it's visible to folks without mage gifts like those farmers back there.” She waved her hand in the direction she had run from. “They're on their knees, sobbing and praying.”

“It's Telubra,” Carmen said. “There was a portion of Telubra's awareness down there. I thought it went dormant when the king died. We hit bedrock and it was dug in there, so maybe it was.”

“The land and the king are not closely tied together,” Odette said as she arrived. “Would you like help getting up?”

“I'd only fall over again,” she said, flopping her hand in Athena's direction, trying to signify the blonde had already tried and failed.

“Ow,” the other woman said. She had managed to get her arms underneath her head and was resting her chin on them. “I didn't realize what it was until I had already made the request. And then I think it misunderstood, because I asked it to heal the life above it-”

“She means the crops,” Carmen explained to Petra's confused face. Petra made a shushing motion.

Athena continued as of there had been no interruption. “The other fields didn't have anything like that. The land was linked with the layers above and below it, so the power eased itself into the crops I had marked out. But that energy- it was tied to all of Telubra.”

“So the borders of its request are the Telubrin borders,” Odette said, understanding. “But why would it accept your request? You are not native, it should have completely ignored you.”

“Or else killed you for your insolence,” Petra added dryly. “Maybe all three princes got thrown from their horses at the same time and died. Maybe the children weakened its protections somehow, making it available for you to approach.”

Heavy stomping signified Tae's approach. Snow was with her. He obviously wanted to return to his mistress' side. He licked Athena's face fondly before settling in on her other side, away from Carmen.

“Are you two all right?” Carmen could hear the frown in Tae's voice, annoyed that Odette and Petra hadn't helped them up yet.

“I think it sucked up all our energy,” Carmen said. Her limbs felt like they were full of lead.

“Because of the chant,” Athena said. “The plants' energy was part of us when we performed that part of the working. For all its awareness, it's not clever. Between being woodswomen with nature magic and the native plants' energies, I think it thought we were native spirits.”

Petra opened her mouth to ask a question. Not wanting to start a debate with the ever-curious elf, Carmen explained, “Belike dryads.”

“Which would make it think you were extensions of it and that your energies were available for use as well,” Tae mused. “Let me loan you some of mine while you get yours back.”

“We'll be here for at least a week,” Carmen groaned. “Provided the farmers don't drive us off with torches and pitchforks for ruining this field.”

Petra moved from where Carmen could see her. “Rather doubt that,” the elf said, amazement in her voice. “I know why they were weeping. You’ve got to get up and see this. Tae, see if you can haul Athena up while Odette pretends to help me with Carmen.” As she spoke, she circled back around Carmen and leaned down to grab Carmen’s hands. “Odette, stop staring at it and give Carmen a push when I lift her.”

After a short tussle of limbs, they managed to get the two woodswomen balanced leaning against each other. Tae hovered behind them, ready to grab someone should they fall.

From her poor view on the ground, Carmen had seen that the working they had meant to perform had succeeded. The barley that had been within her line of sight was lush and green, completely unlike the faded crops they had originally been.

Standing, though, the view was something else entirely. As far as her eyes could see, the fields were all vibrantly healthy, waving in the breeze. The ivy she had noticed on Yeoman Giles’ walls was in full bloom, no longer brittle and close to death. His door stood wide open, his many young children dancing about in the herb garden planted in front of the house. She could faintly hear their shrieks of laughter.

The column of water- magic, Petra had said- still gushed noisily into the endless sky, small rainbows glittering in the sky as the sun hit the mist.

“'Tis beautiful,” Athena said softly, not wanting to break the moment.

“'Tis a miracle,” said a voice from behind them.

Carmen turned her head to the side, forgetting momentarily about her hold on Athena. They smacked their temples together. Her arm tightened around Athena's waist as they both began to double over in pain. Tae's arms shot out, bracing their shoulders, keeping them from collapsing.

“Yeoman Yates,” Odette greeted as Carmen and Athena stumbled to turn around.

The large bearded man strode towards them with two others. Carmen recognized the one as Yeoman Giles, the owner of the field they had just ruined. His walk was the unsteady gait of a man fresh off of months-long bed rest. The other, an old man walking slowly with a cane, wore the pale blue robes of a sun priest of Jadus. The two farmers' gazes were locked on the geyser behind where the women stood, while the priest focused on where Tae stood holding up Carmen and Athena.

“They have spoken to the land,” he announced. Carmen barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “And the land has given its answer. The line of Telubrin kings has failed it for the last time. Telubra can no longer wait for a king to once again serve his people and not just himself and has released its power for the people to call upon themselves.”

Maybe all three princes really had fallen off their horses and died, Carmen thought. If the priest were right, the power of Telubra was now in the hands of the workers of the earth, instead of the man they held fealty to.

“‘Tis a most wondrous miracle,” Giles said in a far away voice, his eyes never leaving the sight of the geyser. “Will it keep doing that? My crops will be ruined by people traipsing about come to honor it. How did ya do this?”

“‘Twas an accident,” Athena replied sheepishly. “The boundaries between the energy of your field and the deeper energies that tie all of the country together were worn thin here. I did not notice until it was already awakening.”

“It should have killed us for our intrusion,” Carmen said hoarsely.

“There has been too much death,” the priest said. “The spirit must feel that way as well. Between the war and the drought, our country will take generations to recover. But you ladies have provided the first ray of hope that it can and will happen.”

“You are not well to travel,” Yates said, turning his gaze to the two woodswomen bracing themselves on Tae’s sturdy form.

“No,” Odette said. “All of their energies were drained by that.” She motioned towards the geyser behind them. Carmen thought the noise was beginning to trickle off. “It will take several days for them to recover enough for us to move on.” She shared a glance with Tae, who shrugged. Their timetable was constantly in flux. Carmen could only hope this unexpected delay did not cause them to miss Crunch again. 

“You will stay with my family,” the big man said. “The twins will not mind spending some time in the kennels, 'twill be cooler down there anyway.”

Giles looked ready to argue, but at a look from the old priest, he stayed quiet. Carmen wondered what that was about.

“We could not possibly-” Tae started.

“You have given all of Telubra a gift we can never repay,” the priest interrupted. “With the crops we will harvest come autumn, there will be surplus for the first time in a decade. Let Heron’s Rest host you until you are well enough to continue your travels.”

“Tae, do not argue,” Odette scolded. “It is very kind of them to make the offer.”

“My apologies,” the healer said to Yates.

“‘Tis we who are beholden to ya, priestess,” the man said, an amused smile on his face. “Ya traded three fields for a night’s rest and have given us all of our land back instead. Ya could stay for tennights and never come close to being paid what is owed.”

\----

Dusk had fallen upon the newly-green town of Heron’s Rest. Petra stood outside Mal’s public house, leaning against the wall to watch the distant lake. The noisy celebration inside would likely go on long into the night. Athena and Carmen had put in an appearance early on, but had left early, pleading exhaustion. Tae and Odette were still inside, making merry with the villagers. Mal had already asked to hire Galfrid’s eldest daughter to start clearing the rooms upstairs, to make them livable for the eventual pilgrims who undoubtedly were already beginning to feel the power thrumming through Telubra’s skies and land.

The rushing flow of earth magic in Giles’ field had finally trickled away, the geyser disappearing from the farmers’ vision long before the women’s. Petra hadn’t been terribly surprised to see Giles’ second youngest keep his eyes on it far longer than the rest. The women had been trying to spot which of his children had the ability to tap into nature magic. It was the likeliest cause for what had happened; an innocent unwittingly calling upon his native country’s energies as he tried diligently to coax his father’s fields to fertility, slowly wearing away the protections that separated the earth magic anyone with the gift could try to call upon from the powerful energies of the greater earth spirit who had slumbered fitfully underneath Telubra.

It was probably the reason why, sooner or later, empires fell. Kingdom borders were set by a combination of the ambition of its people and the power of the spirit chosen to dwell in that land. Empires took control of kingdoms, never laying claim to an earth spirit of their own. Places like the Free Coast, on the eastern shoreline of Caldonia, had only lesser earth spirits- like the dryads Carmen mentioned earlier. In ancient days, the spirits had made pacts with the elders and leaders of people who inhabited the lands where they were staking out their own territory. The people would take care of the land and the land would take care of the people, a beneficial symbiotic relationship that had lasted until the poor rulers began to outnumber the good and stopped making the necessary tithes the spirits lived on.

This spirit had finally said enough was enough and soon the vast outpouring of energy would spread across the entire country and rain down upon the unsuspecting citizenry. And only a four-year-old’s love of and devotion to his father and family had kept it from being the same rain of blood that the earth spirit was receiving from the men who would seat themselves upon the throne. The simple people of Heron’s Rest had no idea how close Athena and Carmen had come to unintentionally releasing a blood-maddened greater earth spirit upon them. Instead, though, it would be a rain of healing and rebirth, though she doubted it would be an easy rain. The spirits of the earth, while usually not violent, were still very forceful.

Heavy footsteps interrupted her thoughts.

“Lady,” said a soft male voice, obviously hesitant to draw her attention.

She turned her head. Farmer Giles stood there, his four-year-old in his arms. The boy had curled his dark head up under his father's chin and his eyelids were at half-mast. “Yeoman Giles,” she greeted, confused about why he had left the noisy party inside the public house and why he had brought his sleepy child with him.

“Yer friends, the nature witches? Be they teachers?”

Of the five of them, Odette was generally accepted as being the most approachable. Unless Tae was out of her armor. Even in armor, Tae radiated compassionate sympathy, but the armor left viewers confused. She wasn’t certain why he was asking her this. “Carmen knows only the basics of woods magic. And Athena’s not a native of this land. She knows what is taught in the lands past the eastern ocean. It would be a disservice to your son to teach him those ways, when this land has other rituals meant for speaking with nature. And he is still far too young to be apprenticed.”

“Helios Osgar says the last time a nature witch came by was forty years ago,” he began, a pained look in his eyes. “Aleyn cannot wait that long.”

“They will come now,” Petra said dryly. “They won’t be able to help themselves. Every woodsworker from here to Biar would have felt what happened here and will come to investigate.”

“But how can I trust those who do show up?”

“How can you really trust us?” Petra cut herself off before she continued that direction of conversation. “Look, have Tae mark him. Tae’s patron is a god of protection. So only those woodsworkers who will have Aleyn’s best interests in mind will notice that he has nature magic. You must still judge those who do see it.”

He considered the idea, petting his child's head as the boy snuffled sleepily into his neck. “But she carries the sign of the sun. Jadus' strength be not protection-”

She huffed loudly in irritation. The amulet around Tae's neck was an entirely different symbol. Obviously Tae's armor had scared him into not staring at all, instead of staring at her bosom too long. “She is a devotee of the Protector, head of the Elven Court. His sign is also the sun,” she explained.

“Thank ye for the advice, lady,” he said, flushing- either from anger or embarrassment, Petra didn't know or care.

“Take care of yourselves,” she said in polite dismissal. “This place will become very popular for a time.”

He left, leaving her alone again. She thunked her head back against the building, hoping he wouldn't bump into Odette and complain about her attitude. Odette always seemed so disappointed in her poor attitude with the people they met.

Like it was her fault none of them were brighter than a bag of bricks. Conversations like that made her miss Crunch. At least he accepted he was dim-witted and didn't get insulted when she corrected him. Of course, he was also almost a metre taller than her and could lift her with two fingers. Should he ever choose to get insulted, she was a fly easily swatted away.

He had better be in Lothar. Telubra was the only country on the entire continent where they hadn't looked for him yet. And wasn’t it odd how none of the diviners of Isis they had spoken with seemed to be able to tell where he was? Certainly they wouldn't accept payment for false visions, no. That wouldn't be right, after all. It was merely bad luck they always seemed to arrive in town months after he left. 

She could feel the temperature of the air around her increasing with her anger and exhaled loudly, concentrating on pulling back in the energy she was releasing. She practiced fire magic, she should know better than to lose her control of her temper. And she knew better than to let her thoughts dwell on things that would make her angry- such as the fact the Isador priestesses were sending them on a wild goose chase across Caldonia.

There were more footsteps. She held back on sighing in exasperation, knowing she could use the distraction. Likely everyone in the village was making the rounds, trying to speak to all of them. She pulled away from the wall, turning to see who approached.

Yeoman Yates had two ale mugs in his big hands, so she decided against mouthing off at him and grinned brightly as he handed her one.

“Thanks. Mal wouldn't serve me any. Insisted it wasn't for children.”

He waited until she was already drinking. “’Tis small beer.” He chuckled as she pulled back from the mug, coughing. “There's little alcohol in it to speak of. We make it for our children. 'Tis healthier than water, and more filling.”

“You also need to chew it.” She made a face at the mug, but continued to drink from it. “I don't like that man.”

“Yer tall friend, the one in the walking dress, didn’t understand my worry when I spoke to her. She suggested I speak with ye. Mal overheard the conversation and gave me the small beer to bring to ye,” he explained.

“Of course he did. I'm a growing child.” She finished the mug off quickly. “So what did Odette send you to me about?”

“Many people will come here now. Trying to find out what happened.” She nodded when he paused. “What do we tell them?”

“That two nature witches interceded on your behalf with a local water spirit,” she said quickly. “Or more appropriately, interceded with the earth spirit on the lake spirit's behalf.”

“We don't have one.”

“Now that is where you would be wrong. With the length of time this drought has been, and with you farmers drawing water from it, that lake should have dried up ages ago. There's a naiad or something living in there, and it doesn't want its home demolished, so it keeps making more water. But not at the rate you're taking it out. So obviously, when two woodswomen came walking through the village, it appealed to them as defenders of nature. But water is a necessity for farmers, so they went straight to the source of the weather problems, brave girls that they were.”

“That's a lot of nonsense,” he said skeptically. His gaze, though, was locked meditatively on the still lake waters in the distance.

“Obviously,” Petra agreed. A small water spirit like the one in the lake wouldn’t risk attracting the attention of foreign practitioners of nature magic. It would have no way of judging their intentions. I've always found the best way to hide the truth is in a lot of lies. At least when it comes to things like this. After all, our request was a lot of nonsense too. But that doesn't keep it from being true.”

“So if yer request was nonsense, why did ya really want to stay here for a day?” Yates took a big drink out of his ale- probably something far tastier than small beer, Petra thought bitterly. He wasn't acting as if there was anything by idle curiosity behind the question.

“Odette blew up a temple back in Khoresbar to stop the troll invasion, but it took a lot of energy out of her. She needed the break. But we didn't think it through, and now we're stuck here while Carmen and Athena regain their energy,” she said honestly, the same wild grin on her face that she wore when she told him about the water spirit.

“So the bigger yer lie, the more people think it must be true, because who would make up a lie that outrageous and silly?” he mused. He didn’t look as if he believed her story, but that had rather been the point. “It could work. We would do ya no favors by telling strangers about yer friends' deeds. People would seek ye out for similar favors for nothing, and that's no way to live.”

“Wise of you,” Petra said, tilting her head back to further consider the big man. His way of speaking was uneducated, but Petra knew better than most that appearances were deceiving. The big man might look as strong and dumb as an ox, but she knew village decisions not made by the sun-priest were made by him. That was not an honor given to a stupid or foolish man.

“Cautious, more like. I can see you folks are following someone else's trail and the last thing ye'd want is people on yer trail as well. Might scare yer prey off.” He paused to look past the public house, further down the street. “‘Tis late indeed for Helios Osgar to still be running errands.”

She followed his gaze. The snowy-haired old man moved at a brisk pace towards them.

“Something lit a fire underneath him,” she agreed. He certainly hadn’t moved that fast coming to see what Carmen and Athena had wrought in Yeoman Giles’ barley field.

Petra jogged down the road towards him, disliking seeing the frail man moving so quickly. Yates followed her.

“Be there anything we can do for ye, Helios Osgar?” Yates asked they grew close.

“I do not mean to interrupt,” the older man said, leaning heavily on his cane. His wrinkled face was pale from overexertion.

“It was nothing of import,” Petra assured him.

“There are guests in the temple who asked for you ladies.” She could hear a question buried in his voice. How had anyone known they would be in Heron’s Rest, after all? It was not on the most direct route to Felaya from either Reeds or Khoresbar. They liked to meander across the countryside at their own pace, but Heron’s Rest had been chosen to proceed to instead of West Aldglen because Athena had felt the tug of nature magic calling her that way. Aleyn would need an exceptional teacher for his abilities- four really was too young to be showing such strength.

She gave a mental shake of her head.

“Guests?” she repeated, letting surprise color her voice.

“Three sun-knights who claim to be from Reeds in Sundabar,” the priest explained. “The two men have the right accent, but the woman who leads them hails from much further west. But Jadus sends his people where he wills, so she could be connected to their temple.”

“There were no female sun-knights present in Reeds when we stopped there,” Petra said with a frown. “She might have come from Khorevail. Our last job was an errand for the temple of Jadus there. Did they ask for us by name or description?”

“By name. They seek an audience with your sorceress. For what, they would not tell me, only that it was of the utmost urgency.”

“Instead of fighting the crowd in the pub, Helios Osgar, why don’t I fish her and Tae out of there while you return to your bed,” she said. “At a much slower walk, of course.”

“I have passed their message along, so I will not feel guilty following your suggestion,” he said. “If I could trouble Yeoman Yates for an arm, I would be much obliged. I fear my knees feel their age tonight.”

“’Would be no trouble, Helios. I’ve had me words with the gel.” He proffered his arm to the priest. Petra thought he could carry the old man back with no troubles, but was certain Osgar’s dignity wouldn’t allow it.

“Good evening to you both,” she said before turning to head back to the public house. What would bring someone from Khorevail this far into Telubra? The matter promised to be interesting.


	4. The Forgotten Temple

Three armored people were waiting in the priest’s office for them.  The two men were dark-haired and young, only recently knighted.  Their scale armor was covered in dust, but looked in very good condition otherwise.  Each had a flanged mace hanging off his left hip and a large heater shield across his back.  The other person was a tall woman with cropped platinum blonde hair and striking cheek bones.  She wore plate mail similar to Tae’s, with a long navy blue cloak clasped at her neck.  It was embroidered with a large gold sunburst in the center.  Petra hadn't seen a female in the colors of Jadus in all her wanderings across the continent and wondered at the strength of will it had taken the woman to fight her way through the male-dominated ranks.

She turned from where she had been speaking quietly to the two men as they entered.

“Sorceress Odette,” she greeted, nodding politely at the three of them.  “I apologize for pulling you away from things, but I fear our mission cannot wait.”

Petra stayed close to the door as Odette and Tae joined the three sun-knights beside the priest’s desk.  Next to Odette’s clean gray walking dress and Tae in her borrowed gown- her clothing had been whisked away with a great deal of tutting by Mathild, Yeoman Yates’ pleasant wife- the travel dust was even further evident on the three.  Though the drought had left the land dry and dust was to be expected, much of the road between Reeds and Heron’s Rest was stone, not dirt.  It took a great deal of effort to throw up enough dust to be coated in it.

“You have the advantage of us,” Odette said coolly.  “You know our names, but the opposite cannot be said.”

“I am Yseult, a crusader out of Khorevail,” the blonde introduced herself.  “With me are Gethin and Barrett, knights from the temple of Jadus in Reeds.  I have been following your trail since the mess you left in Redbrook.  Helios Cantrell told me he had sent you to Khoresbar, which I found deserted.  I went to Reeds, thinking there might be people there who had seen you.  Helios Edric told me of your actions, and Gethin and Barrett agreed to accompany me into Telubra.  Gethin is not completely unskilled in the manners of tracking, and so I have finally caught up to you here.  Making yet another mess, it would seem.”

Following someone’s tracks on a disused road wasn’t really something to brag about, Petra thought.  What burr had she sat on to speak so rudely to people she had never even met?

“The mess was already made,” Tae said, not sounding a bit defensive about the matter.  “Would you prefer we had left them to starve in the depths of winter because the land refused to aid them?”

One of the blonde’s eyebrows twitched minutely.  “It was not your responsibility to dabble in things left to-”

“It’s the king’s responsibility, but no one with any sense of honor has ever held the throne in Telubra,” Petra snapped.  Dabble, indeed.  She might not have been particularly impressed with the woodswomen’s choice of actions- though the results were unbelievable- but there was no cause for the sun-knight to belittle their efforts.  “Why shouldn’t those with the ability take it upon themselves to help others?  They’re completely undeserving of the land’s vengeance, not when the king can afford to buy outland crops to keep his plate full while the vast majority of his people slowly starve to death.”

“And who are you to judge, little foreigner?” Petra thought the one who spoke to be Barrett.  Neither man looked truly interested in joining the discussion, but that must have struck a nerve somewhere.  She wondered why a Sund would care about actions in Telubra.

“Enough, Petra,” Odette said as she opened her mouth to answer.  “This is not their country either, so they have no reason to judge our actions here.  Sundabar may be displeased by the fact that Telubra will soon no longer need to invest so heavily in Sund crops, but it is a good and right thing we have done here.”

Petra eyes glittered with malicious amusement as Barrett drew himself up further and rounded on the sorceress.

“And what of the brothers of Folken Abbey, dear lady?” Yseult asked in a cold voice, cutting off whatever the man had planned to say.  “Was that a good and right act as well, slaughtering those poor men like animals?”

Petra could almost hear Odette’s jaw snap shut in confusion.  Their actions at Folken Abbey were perfectly clear.  The monks there had been slowly draining the nearby town of Redbrook of poor folk and orphans for blood sacrifice.  Any decent person with the ability to put a stop to it would have done what they did- put all fourteen men to the knife.  Whatever would have brought the ire of the sun-knights of Jadus, who were well known for doing precisely the same thing the women had done?

Tae found her voice first.  “You mean the men who were sacrificing children to raise enough power to return their fallen prophet to life?  I cannot say the world is not a better place without them.  The poor man we discovered locked in a closet next in line for their bloody altar would agree with us,” she said calmly.  Both men looked startled at the words, and Petra wondered what the blonde had told them about it.  For that matter, she wondered what the blonde had been told.  “Was there a good reason you tracked as down, Crusader Yseult, or did you just come here to berate us until we agreed we were terrible people who did not deserve to live and would gladly do whatever you asked as our punishment?”

The blonde’s twitchy eyebrow had turned into a throbbing vein.  She closed her eyes and inhaled quickly, then slowly exhaled, visibly calming herself.

“Forgive me my assumption,” Yseult said.  Petra almost slipped off of the wall she was leaning against.  A sun-knight of Yseult’s rank apologized for nothing.  The two men looked just as surprised as she felt and could probably be knocked over with a feather.  “I was not the one who looked into the matters at Redbrook, and accepted the investigator’s report that intruders had sacrificed the brothers in a dark ritual.  I will have to send word back to Khorevail that the Folken Abbey records will have to be reexamined.”

“Hold on,” Petra said, completely lost, “you’re just going to take our word on that matter?  What sort of nonsense is that?”

“As a Crusader, I hold one of the highest ranks a sun-knight of Jadus may obtain. My bond with my patron is such that I can sense falsehood.  I can tell that Peregrine Tae-Lana speaks only the truth.  But I cannot use this gift upon a written report.  An investigator does not lie on such matters.  Their word has always been their bond.”

“But obviously this one did lie,” Tae said.

“This is why I must send word back to Khorevail that something is wrong with one of the investigators.”

“Do you know who originally sent the report?” Petra asked, ice running down her back.  The man they had released had said he was a researcher.  What if he was an investigator for the Jaden priesthood, what if he had been working on some sort of elaborate trap to set them up?

“Lorist Teilomere sent notice there was a problem at the Abbey, but Lorist Duxxil was the one to actually go.  Teilomere was already at his next location and had no time to write a report on the matter and Duxxil has done this sort of thing for him before.  The records keepers will have to go over everything Duxxil has done.”

“Would you like an explanation of our actions in Khoresbar as well, or is this inquisition over?” Tae asked.

“I could tell you about all the letters between Folken's head abbot and Lightbringer Roland in Khoresbar if you want,” Petra added coolly. “It was the main reason why I didn't put up much of a fight when the temple in Khorevail asked us to deliver messages there.  I was hoping to go through his desk, but unfortunately, his office was too filled with trolls for me to look through.  And we were too busy with other matters.”

“Letters?” The twitch was back in Yseult's eyebrow. Either their investigator hadn't found them or he had hidden them. Considering the fact he was willing to throw the monks' monstrous actions onto the women who had put a stop to it, Petra thought the latter to be more likely. She wondered how deeply the rot had set into the Jaden hierarchy. The sun-knights appeared to be out of the loop, so perhaps it was merely the priests playing terrible deep games with each other.

“I like catching up on gossip. While Tae and Odette dealt with the captive we released, I helped myself to the abbot's desk. His correspondence was boring up until about a year ago. Then it slowly got weird. Like something inside of him was twisting up his sense of right and wrong. The brothers apparently had the same thing happening to them, since they went along with his plans. The letters from Lightbringer Roland were originally worried and demanding he report back to Khorevail for an evaluation. Then they twisted the same way- advice on how better to choose their sacrifices, questions about results-” She trailed off as the others stared at her in a combination of fascination and horror.

“And you didn't bring this to the attention of Khorevail when you were there?” Gethin cried.

“You toned that story down a great deal when you mentioned it to us,” Odette said. She looked disappointed. Petra hated it when that happened.  She still wasn't about to apologize for it.

“I mentioned it to the Isador priestess when she was dragging us up to the temple back in Khorevail. She told me to stay quiet and keep my head down while we were there. And of course I toned it down, they were discussing whether using the 'goods' beforehand would add to the power of the sacrifice or take from it. It was horrible! And since you have this terrible habit of poking your nose into other people's business, I decided to downplay it unless we ran into more troubles with the Jadens.” She eyed the ashen-faced knights. “Which now we have.”

“But Lightbringer Roland?” Gethin didn't look as if he believed her.  Of course, the temple in Reeds was directly under the control of the Lightbringer in Khoresbar.  He was probably worried if any priests there had the same sickness taking over them.

“I can guess which Isador that was,” Yseult said, a flat look in her eyes. She had spoken with Edric. He would have told her about the letters from his sister.

“I can't tell you what she was thinking. I just know when a diviner tells you to hush up or you'll have painful things happen to you, you hush up. So either the Senior Lightbringer in Khorevail has the same sickness or it shouldn't be brought to his attention because the same thing might happen to him as Lightbringer Roland. I couldn't find anything in the head abbot's desk that would explain why his abbey started going insane, but that doesn't mean that isn't how it happened to them as well.  But it wasn't any of our business and I wasn't going to draw attention to ourselves over it. It's your temple, Crusader, you set it to rights.”

The words seemed to put a fire back into the tall woman's eyes. “Setting a temple to rights is precisely why I came here.  But when we are done with my mission, I am afraid I must ask you to return with me to Khorevail to discuss this matter with my seniors.  These are serious charges you bring up against powerful men.”

In the discussion concerning Folken Abbey, Petra had forgotten Yseult had mentioned a mission, or assumed it to be something along the lines of clapping them in irons and dragging them back to Khorevail to discuss the abbey. Apparently it was nothing of the sort, and Tae had guessed aright that they were to be berated into doing the sun-knight's will. That wasn't likely now, but her sense of curiosity was exceeded only by Odette's.

“What then is the reason you asked to speak with me, if not to discuss our actions?” Odette asked.

“There is a temple far to the north, nestled in Telubra's mountains, in a completely inaccessible spot. There have been reports of evil magic leaking from there and I have been asked to go and fix the problem. The temple in Reeds requested I bring Barrett and Gethin along,” she motioned to the young men, “to learn how to bring down warding spells and to help slay whatever fell beast was imprisoned there and is now, for whatever reason, trying to make its escape.”

“And what about this matter would you need me for?” Odette asked. “It would be easier for you to untangle holy warding spells than for me.”

“Most certainly,” the blonde replied. “No, we require transport. I have obtained an orb of teleportation that will allow for two trips, but I was not informed of the fact that its use is inaccessible to divine energies.”

“So you require the help of someone who taps into the arcane ley lines to practice their magic. And powerful enough to transport you to a location never viewed before.”

“And since you thought her some sort of criminal, you could just demand her services as some sort of public recompense,” Petra added, crossing her arms across her chest. “So now that you don't have that to demand of her, just how do you think you'll pay her should she agree?”

“I hadn't considered the matter. It is usually considered an honor to handle such matters for the order of Jadus,” the blonde said stiffly.

She snorted. “That and three fehn will get you a bowl of soup.”

Petra was growing fond of the crusader's eyebrow twitch. It was unusual to see in someone so iron-willed. The woman must have had a great deal on her mind for a lengthy amount of time to let herself be riled so easily. “It is something to be discussed with the purser in Khorevail. And we have not the time.  The energies released grow daily.”

“We would not be able to travel for the next several days,” Tae said.

“We only require the services of the sorceress,” Gethin interjected into the conversation. The three women shot him identical disbelieving looks.

“We travel together,” Odette said coolly. “To hire one to go someplace is to hire all. An orb of teleportation can handle ten at a time, there would be no problem.”

“You don't really expect us to let you go anywhere with her alone, do you?” Petra asked scathingly. “You've already implied you were going to force her to do the work, I seriously doubt you're going to go out of your way to protect her should things go wrong.”

”Circumstances have changed.  I was working with false information,” Yseult said. Petra could hear the ire rising in the crusader's voice. She wasn't particularly concerned about it.  “Obviously I cannot expect-”

“You might still be,” the sorceress interrupted. “It is better to have four more fighters at hand should the information concerning this place be wrong.”

Yseult closed her mouth and seemed to consider Odette's words.  ”You do have a point,” the crusader said, not actually agreeing to the matter.

Barrett, on the other hand, was more direct.  “Really, four more fighters?” He said in a disbelieving tone, visibly looking the women up and down.  “I might count on woodsworkers to be good in a fight, but I've never known a sorceress to be anything but useless, and priestesses are for healing and making up fake fortunes.”

Petra was moving across the room before he finished speaking, twisting between the two men before they could react, drawing the thin knife from her boot as she stopped behind him.  She caught his right arm and twisted it backwards and up, shoving it against the shield on his back.  She slid her knife through the splints in his mail and let the tip dig into the center of his lower back.

“You say another word to either of them and I’ll make sure you never walk again,” she hissed, pulling his arm further out of joint.  His shoulder made a popping noise.

“Petra!” Tae snapped out, reaching a hand forward in a stopping motion.  “That is unnecessary.”

She ignored her.  “Did you consider the fact that without that 'useless sorceress,'” she punctuated each word with a small shove, “that you won't be getting to where your crusader would like to go?”

He kicked backwards, and she twisted gracefully out of the way, smashing the heel of her foot into his other knee and he clattered backwards, his one arm not making it out from behind him before he hit the ground.  Yseult's armored foot came down square in the center of his chest before he could move to get up.

“My apologies, my ladies,” the woman said icily, angry gray eyes looking at Tae and Odette.  “He is the third son of a minor nobleman and is used to his brainless marriage- and fashion-oriented sisters and the broodmares his father has turned his peasants' wives into for more cheap labor.  A sun-knight of Jadus should know better than to treat a sorceress of your caliber like that, and knows full well his Isador sisters will turn his life into a living hell should he speak that way about them within their hearing.”  She turned her gaze first to the still-startled Gethin, who stared back at her confusedly before nodding his head with a great gulp of his Adam's apple.  She then glowered down at the man at her feet.

“Crusader, I insist-” he started, the angry look on his face telling Petra he was not remorseful in the slightest for the insults he had thrown.

“If you do not apologize to them this second, Sun-Knight Barrett, I will insist,” she repeated his word with a loud emphasis, “that you return to Reeds to undertake diplomacy lessons with the Isador sisterhood.  In fact, when this mission is over- should you manage to get over your ego and go with us- I will insist this anyway.  You have seen the Khoresbar temple before she destroyed it, and you saw the wreckage she left.  Do you really think it wise at all to anger her?”

His eyes grew wide at that and his face paled. Certainly it had been a group effort, but Petra had no qualms at all with letting Yseult foist the entire thing onto Odette's shoulders. With more practice, the sorceress would be able to do those things.  And should Barrett survive his bigotry- against either foreigners or women, she didn't know or care- he would do well to take the lesson to heart.  Do not meddle in the affairs of sorceresses, for you are only flesh and bone and easily transformed into a squishy toad.  Or possibly have your spine cut by their annoyed friends.  She wasn't choosy.

“My apologies, sorceress,” he said, wide hazel eyes focused on the gray-gowned brunette.

“And Tae,” Petra shot.

To his credit, his face didn't betray the embarrassed anger he had to feel after that reminder.  “I meant no disrespect, priestess.”

Tae raised both her eyebrows, disbelief evident, but it was Odette who answered.  “That it is the threat of violence that concedes this admission leaves me doubting it is truly meant,” she said, looking down on him coolly, “but I will accept that you do feel sorry for insulting me personally.”

“And I like to think of myself as a forgiving person for even those who do not truly wish it, so I am willing to accept that as the best you could do on such short notice,” Tae said, not a hint of her usual smile on her face.  “And I will find comfort in the knowledge that either your apologies will get better or you will not find a single priestess willing to heal you of any but the most life-threatening of injuries.”

His face flushed in guilty embarrassment, but he kept silent.  Yseult lifted her foot.  She gave a nod of her head to Gethin, and he reached a hand down to pull Barrett up off the floor.

“So now that you've found your place in the dominance hierarchy, you want to leave the bargaining to people who actually matter?” Petra asked, leaning back against the deck and crossing her arms.  “I'd hate to humiliate you in front of your boss again.”

“Petra, that is enough,” Odette said while Yseult shot a glare at the young knight to cow him into keeping silent.  “Do try to remember we will have to work with these people.  I would rather there be some semblance of a good working relationship with them.”

She looked disappointed.  Like it was Petra's fault the man had a bad attitude.  To be honest, it probably was her fault he still had a bad attitude after the reaming the crusader had given him, but it wasn't her fault he had started out with one.  She ducked her head.  “Sorry,” she murmured, contrite.  “I lost my temper.”

“Really now, Petra,” Tae said.  “About the only thing you did right was remembering not to light him on fire like you did the last one.” She managed to keep a perfectly straight face, but her blue eyes twinkled with amusement.

“That is not helping,” Odette scolded.

“I cannot help it.  She was defending my honor.”  And this time Tae did smile.

“If we can get back to the matter at hand?”  Yseult said in an exasperated tone.  “I can understand why you insist on traveling together.  You're all obviously insane and have to keep each other in check.  Should we take only the sorceress, we will likely return to find the village in shambles.”

“More likely just farmers ignoring their crops to do sword drills.  Carmen's a firm believer in self-defense and she was not too happy about the soldiers who looted the general store,” Tae said.  “But it will be at least three days before their energy levels will be up for physical exertion, and that will only be if I can get a few of those strapping farm lads to tie Carmen down to keep her from doing her morning bladework exercises.”

“There is no other way of leaving any earlier than that?” the crusader asked with a frown.  “I did not exaggerate the importance of stopping this evil from continuing to leak out.”

“How are you so certain this temple exists, if there is no way to get to it without magical means?” Tae asked.

“Several of Isis' scriers triangulated its location.  It has been warded against remote viewing, so it is only an assumption on the Isadors' part that it is a temple, but they claim to feel the touch of a god to it, so it is a safe bet.”

“Although there's no guarantee it's not occupied,” Petra said.  “Just because they couldn't scry out a route through the mountains to it doesn't mean nobody can get to it.”

“Then it is just as well we are not leaving right away as I had planned,” Yseult said resignedly.  “There are obviously some things I hadn't considered and we will need to discuss them before we depart.”

“How about we take tomorrow to discuss things among ourselves and speak with you here the day after that?” Odette said.  “There are still things in the village we must set to rights, as well.”

“Very well then,” Yseult said, nodding her head.  “The morning of the second day, we shall see you here.”

Odette motioned for Petra to precede her from the office.  It was wise of her, Petra thought.  She wasn't really known for refraining from playing tricks.  She hopped away from the desk and strode out of the room, not deigning to look back.  She'd already cast a minor cantrip on his footwear anyway.  He'd think there were rocks in them for days.

Odette and Tae followed.  Yseult closed the door behind them, but Petra could hear Barrett's outraged voice ask, “Can we at least leave the feral one behind?”

She grinned toothily.

“I do not trust that smile,” Odette said as they walked down the corridor to the exultation chamber and the exit.

“Well, that's because you know me,” she replied, trying to tone her grin down.  She didn't think she was succeeding.  “I didn't do anything, really.”

“Oh yes, I certainly did not see you casting spells on the loud one,” Odette agreed dryly, arching one elegant brow.

Tae gave a small laugh.  “Tell me you did not give him piles.”

“That would have been obvious,” Petra said haughtily, sticking her nose up.  “Also, I don't know how you think I write my spells, but I can't do anything like that.”

“Then what did you do?” Odette inquired.

“You remember that cursed stone I picked up?  The one that no matter how many times I threw it away, it kept reappearing in my boot?”

“Did you give him a cursed object?” Tae asked incredulously.

“I had to pay through the nose to find someone to remove that curse,” Petra said.  “Of course I didn't keep the rock to give to someone else.  I did, however, make note of its spellbinding.  And how irritating it was to walk with a rock in my boot.”

“I take it he will be constantly shaking out his own boots, trying to get out a rock that is not there,” Odette said with a sigh.  “At least your magic does not have permanency.”

“He compared Tae to one of those water-scrying charlatans and said you were useless, when he was really thinking 'good for nothing but warming beds.'  You're probably going to want to pull on your healer's robes, Tae, just to remind him.”  She pulled the door open, and they stepped out into the night.  “You're lucky I didn't shrink his smallclothes, but that would have actually required touching him again.”

“Do try to think your actions through better next time,” Odette said.  “Sooner or later you are going to anger the wrong person.”

“He wasn't about to do anything to me,” she replied.  “Not with that crusader there.  It was a low-risk gamble.  But I should probably stay out of his line of sight while we're still here.  Farm accidents happen all the time, after all.”

“He is a sun-knight of Jadus,” Tae scolded.  “He is not going to bully you.”

“And Lightbringer Roland was famously known for his charity and mercy before he disappeared,” Petra countered.  “Something bad is going on inside the Jaden priesthood and we'd do best to stay clear of everyone who calls upon Jadus for aid.  I really doubt the priests could get contaminated without the militant arm of the clergy noticing.”

“You think the higher ranks of sun-knights know there is a problem and are not doing anything about it.”

“What happened in Folken Abbey might have been a complete abnormality,” Tae added.

“That doesn't mean it isn't spreading.  Khoresbar's Lightbringer was showing similar symptoms in his letters, and you remember Edric saying the records keeper wanted to experiment with liquid fire on the trolls.  That's something someone like me would do, not a holy man.”

“And if the priests in Khoresbar have gotten this- infection, who is to say they are not spreading it to the temples of the cities they fled to?” Odette said.  “It is something to consider, I agree.  But not until after this work with the sun-knights.  This is a discussion they should have with their elders, not outsiders.  And they would be insulted by us discussing it amongst ourselves in their presence.”

“Not talking to them is no skin off my back,” Petra said.  “They're judgmental and argumentative.”

“And you are not?” Tae scolded.  “At least the crusader was quick to apologize about the matter.”

“And that's so normal for them,” Petra muttered.  “I do confess to wanting to see this temple that cannot be scried.”

“Then why you insist on putting up so much of a fuss-” Tae started.

“Just because I like the job doesn't mean I think we should take it on their terms.  Teleporting in blind with three sun-knights and a sorceress is just plain stupid when you know of four well-trained people jumping at the opportunity to tag along as well.”

“Not to mention I would have to teleport back here to rejoin you rather than teleporting to where the sun-knights would wish to go,” Odette said.  She must have seen something in Petra's face, for she continued. “And do not think I cannot read your thoughts here, Petra.  You might be paranoid that they would force me to take them to their destination instead of returning here, but there must be some semblance of trust for a good working environment.  Constantly worrying everyone has an ulterior motive is no way to live.”

“And an excellent way to get an ulcer,” Tae added with a smile.

Petra shrugged.  “It's kept me alive so far.  But then, I also know I take it too far.  That's what you are for- to tell me when to back down.”

“They will probably want to return to Reeds,” Tae mused.  “So we will not be backtracking too far.”

“The men might want to return home, but the crusader will want to go to Khorevail,” Odette disagreed.  “While she might not mind the travel back from Reeds with news of a successful mission, she will want to report the matters concerning Folken Abbey and Khoresbar's Lightbringer to her superiors as quickly as possible.”

“We'll lose another month,” Petra complained.  “There's no reason for Odette to drain herself again folding it into a week.  The only reason we did it the first time was because the Jadens paid us well for the hassle.  And with the way our luck has been, the Lothar Heights will have been razed and its land salted a week before we get there.”

“Petra, who told us to go to Lothar?”  Odette asked with a sigh.

“One of the Isadors we spoke to in Khorevail,” she replied, cocking her head back in confusion.

“And why did we go to Khorevail?”

“There was an Isador in Khorestun who mentioned that as Crunch’s destination.”

“And Khorestun?”

“It was the closest major city to Redbrook, and Athena needed new boots and hates village fashion.”

“But we were passing through Redbrook because one of the Isador sisters wanted a letter delivered to her family there.”

“Are you trying to imply that the priestesses of Isis are part of some conspiracy to get us to certain places?”  Petra asked.  “Because I already thought of that and it doesn't really add up.”

“We do not have all of the information, of course it does not make sense on our end,” Odette said coolly.  “But ever since entering Valencia, we have been herded westward when we did take jobs for Isador sisters.  The diviners of Isis have an excellent message system; it would be child's play to detour our route.  Redbrook was in no way on our route until we took a job to go to Ironspike north of it.”

“Now who's being paranoid?” Petra asked.

“Merely seeing patterns,” Odette disagreed.  “And Jadus and Isis have closely related clergies here.  If one follows your line of thinking that there is something happening to the Jaden clergy, it stands to reason that those of Isis should also be showing signs of change.”

“Were it not for the fact we did not get information from Isador diviners very often, I half expect it to turn out Crunch never left Biar,” Tae said.

“No, he definitely did the same sort of wandering we did,” Petra said with a shake of her head.  “He sticks out here like a sore thumb and there were definitely plenty of people we came across who had seen him.”

“But few who knew where he was headed.”

They arrived back at the public house.  The celebrations had grown quiet- farming life was controlled by sunlight, and the hour was late indeed for the locals.

“Thank goodness we do not have to go back in there,” Tae said, taking note of the dimmed lights.  “I have never been so-”

“Idolized?” Odette said as Tae stopped, searching for a word.  She continued their walk down the quiet path to Yeoman Yates' house, where Carmen and Athena should already be sleeping.  “It was quite off-putting, especially as it was Athena and Carmen who did the heavy lifting.”

“It toned down after they returned to Yeoman Yates' to rest, but it was still overwhelming.  Even drove Petra to skulking about outside.”

“I was tired of being patronized,” the little redhead said.  “I'm tiny and have youthful features.  They may know intellectually that I'm an elf, but they see me and think of their kids.  And since Tae was giving me frowny faces-”

“You were juggling dishes.”

“I missed that part,” Odette said with a smile.  “You must have been quite bored.”

“There was still food on them,” Tae continued, her voice tilting between amusement and annoyance. A complete win in Petra's books- annoying people by being amusing was always the best way to go.  Or vice versa.

“Well I had to make it a challenge, didn't I?” Petra asked innocently.  “It was either that or the cutlery, and considering Mal wouldn't serve me alcohol, I doubt he would have been happy with me in his knife block.  And juggling fire inside a dusty wooden building is just asking for trouble, even by my standards.”

“I wonder about you, I really do,” Tae said with a shake of her head.  “You have an excellent education, a gift for language, and a completely ingenuous bend for magical theory, and you throw it away spending time on silly nonsense like creating spells to make people think there are rocks in their boots.”

“I like to think of my magic as an offensive weapon in the 'people get offended' sort of way, not in a 'the best defense is a good offense' sort of way.  I'm never going to wield the spell power Odette does, so why shouldn't I get my enjoyment out of what magic I can do?”

“Your gifts would be better served if you put your mind to studying grimoires for more spells to rearrange to your liking instead of people's letters for gossip,” Tae said.

“But then we wouldn't be forewarned that the Jadens are going crazy and that the incident at Folken Abbey wasn't an isolated event.  I still think we'd be better off skipping this job and heading out for Lothar instead.”

“The dark energy spreading from the temple may have something to do with what is happening within the Jaden clergy,” Odette said thoughtfully.

“I hadn't thought of that.  Did Yseult say when it started?  The abbey started going crazy somewhere between a year and a half and two years ago.”

Odette looked thoughtful, but shook her head.  Yseult hadn't said when the leak had started- or more likely, merely been noticed.  Triangulation of an obscured location could take weeks, even through scrying.  Who knew how long the energies had been leaking out of the place before anyone caught on to the problem?

“The trouble in Khoresbar started with that earthquake,” Tae added.  “That was what, a month ago? And the signs point to it not being natural.”

Petra scratched one ear, thinking matters over.  “The weather in this section of the land- on both sides of the Telubra-Sundabar border here- has been poor for the better part of a decade.  But I seriously doubt something like what the crusader spoke of could go unspotted for that long, though.  A lot of the problem with the weather is tied to the Telubrin king, so there may be no relation there.”

Tae shrugged.  “We will just have to ask her when next we speak to her.”

\---

Three days later, they found themselves standing in one of the fields left fallow to regain soil nutrients.  Petra had drawn two large concentric circles on the ground and was carefully writing something in the space in between.

“Seems a bit small,” Carmen said.

“Count yourselves lucky I am not making you hold hands,” Odette told her.  “The further apart people are, the more energy I have to put into doing this.”

“I thought the orb was doing the work,” Tae said, reaching a gloved hand down to scratch Snow's ears where he sat between her and Athena.  Athena had said she was not certain the wolf really understood teleporting.  Folding the land had come across just as regular walking to him, but this sort of transportation seemed to be beyond his ken.  Tae had told her to give up on the argument with the wolf and just let him sort the smells out when they arrived.

“The orb is supplying use of the spell itself- it is not a teleportation spell I know how to use.  Mine is personal and only for much smaller distances to locations I have already seen.  I will be supplying the power.  I would rather not be left completely useless while we are there, if that is all right with you, Carmen.”

Carmen coughed quietly into her hand, a somewhat sheepish look on her face.

“We did want you to just transport four,” Gethin offered, no hint of reproach in his voice.

Odette glanced in his direction.  “Yes, but then I would also teleport us back here to return to my friends.”

“I appreciate you allowing us to choose the return destination,” Yseult said.  “Are your preparations complete?”

Odette looked the group over and then over to where Petra worked.  “It does not need every little detail,” she told the squatting elf, who was still busy drawing runes inside the double set of lines.

“Just because you're cheating the system using an artifact doesn't mean you should get sloppy,” the redhead said without looking up.  “That bracer you wear does the calculations for you when you do your leaps.  I'd rather not arrive with Tae's arms and Carmen's feet if it's all the same to you.”

“It may be a few more minutes,” Odette said, turning back to Yseult.

“What is she doing?” Gethin asked.

“Teleportation requires descriptors,” Odette said.  “For wizards like Petra anyway.  My sorcery is more intuitive, going by my visual observations and mental perceptions.  I think you are the person who is being teleported and so you are the person who arrives.  Using a stored spell like the one in the orb is much the same way, but Petra apparently would feel safer if the circle had our descriptions in it as a redundancy feature.  The usual mishap with teleportation is arriving in somebody else's clothes, but we did meet someone in our travels once with two left hands.”

Barrett looked like he was about to say something, but Gethin nudged him gently as a reminder to hush.  He had not ingratiated himself to any of the women.  Tae was just relieved he had not mouthed off in front of Carmen.  She had an even shorter temper than Petra's and had the physical strength for a lengthy brawl.  Petra had merely mouthed off right back at the man- though her threat had not been an idle one.  Carmen would go straight for punching him in the face should he insult her ability to fight.

It had not been as pleasant a break as they had originally been looking forward to when Tae had first informed them they would have to delay travels to let the two woodswomen rest and regain their energies.

“What did you put my weight down as?” Tae asked, peering down at Petra's handiwork.  She was not really surprised to find she could not read it.  Knowledge of arcane languages was not something Tae had needed for her duties.  It was enough that she could manage Kelathyl without the horrendous accent she had learned at her mother's knee until her aunt had finally coaxed her out of pronouncing every letter so flatly. Petra still flinched half the time she spoke, but the little elf was overly picky about trills.

“Your armor counts too, Tae,” she huffed.  “Wait, how did you even know I was doing you?”

“I may not be able to read it, but I have seen you write my name this way a number of times.  I guessed about the weight.”

Petra grinned as she continued her scrawl.  “I should mark you as three kilograms heavier just to see what would happen.”

“Who do you have left to do?” Carmen asked.

“Impatient much?” Petra said, no bark in her voice.  “Tae's the last.  I had to do a bunch of modifiers for the sun-knights,” she gestured with her free hand, “but I figure Yseult carting around the orb for however long it’s been will have kind of seeped her descriptors into it a bit.”

“Sounds sloppy,” Carmen said with a grin.

“I hate you,” Petra grumbled.

“I'm a completely lovable person,” Carmen said archly.  “Everyone here agrees.”

Athena giggled.

“All set,” Petra said, hopping up and dusting her hands off on her pants.

“And we do not have to hold hands?” Yseult questioned.

Odette smiled.  “Stand together as closely as possible, but I would prefer you not to be touching.”  She moved to stand directly in the center of the circle.  “Please do not step on the lines, I am using them as a frame of reference.”

Yseult handed her a small pink orb from out of the pouch at her side.  “Please be careful with this.  I do not wish to walk out of Telubra's mountains.  It has only been done once in recent history and I am not packed for such a trek.”

“That be true for the rest of us,” Carmen murmured as she followed the others into the circle. She wondered at Barrett’s limp, but one look at Petra’s smirk as she watched the man told her she was better off not asking.

\----

They arrived at the steps of a small temple.  It was built in the oldest of styles- a small rectangular building whose side walls extended well past the doorway to form a small shadowed courtyard.  Tae thought it had only one room. The temple was surrounded by columnar supports placed a metre from the walls. The columns had been sanded flat, not fluted as was common in classical religious architecture. The morning sun highlighted all the pits erosion and time had worn into them.

Tae found it remarkably plain for a temple.  Judging by the frown on Petra's face as she stared at the building, hands dug into her pockets, she felt something similar.  Odette seemed to be too busy clearing her head to pay close attention to the building, and the sun-knights were already moving up the steps, intent on their mission.

“Seems abandoned,” Carmen finally said.  Snow whined softly.

“Seems creepy,” Petra added.  “Want to check it out?”

“I suppose they might need help finding where the wards are located,” Athena said, unsure whether or not she actually wanted to go inside.

“Have they decided whether they will reapply the wards, or remove them to banish whatever it holds?” Carmen asked.  “Only Tae would be able to help fix them.”

“They'll probably take them down and get rid of it so this won't happen again,” Petra said, heading up the steps.

The other women followed her inside.

She had thought rightly.  There was just the single large room inside.  It was empty, its only decoration two rows of pillars lining the room.  Strangely, they looked just as eroded as the ones outside.  The only people inside of it were the three sun-knights.

"This place is really creepy," Petra said as they entered the empty naos. Rather unnecessarily, Tae thought. She and Odette were the only ones here that did not channel divine energies, and the rest of the party were even more ill at ease than the tiny elf.

"The ancient one that was bound to this place sleeps fitfully," Yseult said from where she stood at the east wall, inspecting it for something. Both men looked as if they had swallowed something sour, but she had the calm, serene features of a woman who knew she was an extension of her god's arm.  Tae hated her a little for it- she knew her face was showing how disturbed she felt and she wished she had the same control over her expressions.  "We could find no records of which priest it was who bound him here, or who he is, but this is definitely the center of the disturbances. We must find the anchor wards and see what they can tell us about the prisoner. There should be a holy symbol of Jadus marked somewhere in here.  It was his priests who originally bound the sleeper."

The others spread out to help search the empty naos. Feeling ill at ease in the temple, Tae returned to the portico they had entered through. There was something that felt hugely wrong about the place.  The less time they spent here, the better.

"The frieze is unadorned."

Tae jumped, spinning awkwardly around to see who had snuck up on her. Petra grabbed one of her arms before she finished overbalancing, taking a step forward as Tae's greater weight tugged her off-balance as well. Petra grinned at her glare, and Tae rolled her eyes, knowing the redhead could not help being silent on her feet.

"The frieze?" she repeated, deciding against snapping at Petra. The tiny elf took delight in catching people unawares and would only feel complimented by Tae's irritation.

Petra pointed directly upwards. "You see the band of stone across the top of the columns that circles the building that the roof sits on? That's the entablature. The frieze is the decorative middle part. Religious architecture usually has reliefs with the god's supposed feats sculpted in. Or at least his holy symbol. Even cultists pretty up their sad little altar rooms. There's absolutely nothing anywhere. It's as if-" Petra stopped, frowning in thought. She walked further outside, heading down the entrance steps. Tae tagged along noisily behind her, almost running into her as the elf stopped at the foot of the steps and spun back around to look at the front of the column-encircled building. "Do you see anything in that triangle up there at top of the building?"

She followed Petra's gaze. It was a rectangular building made of a light gray stone. Six columns stood at the front of the temple, more lining the sides. Shadowed behind them were the actual walls of the temple. Atop the columns rested the entablature Petra had spoken of; from this distance, it would be simple to make out any detail of the decoration, had there been any. The roof rose in from the sides in a slant, peaking in the middle of the building to form a large triangle with the entablature as a base.

Tae recalled seeing an ancient temple of Khory built similarly. And the triangle had been filled with an intricately detailed high relief of the earth goddess' dance of creation. There was nothing to this building. It was as if the imprisoned being had been completely erased from the very architecture of its own temple.

And yet Tae could feel the pulse of evil, madness, and hatred pouring out of every centimetre of the building. She looked away, shivering.

"I noticed something off about it right away.  And the interior is wrong too.  There's something here," Petra said, gaze moving downwards to the shadowed entrance. "Hidden away. Something is wrong, and it's not just fading wards." Petra jogged back up the stairs, disappearing back into the naos.

Tae stayed where she was, staring at the pedimental triangle. It wavered slightly, like water rippling after a pebble was tossed in. It had to be an illusion. She clenched her hand around the holy symbol around her neck and frowned, willing herself to see the underneath.

The entire building rippled, and she could see the building shake as a wave of magic spread out of it, and then snapped back in. The aura of evil intensified, almost choking her.

She stared as fluting appeared on the now almost pristine white columns. The frieze became a tile pattern, alternating between black triglyphs and deep purple tiles with a curlicue spiral in low relief carved into them. The walls were the same pristine white as the columns, and the roof was now black. The great triangle had colorful sculptures of a great battle of gods and spirits. She did not recognize many. And those she did recognize seemed much diminished, or possibly just young, before they came into their power. At each corner of the roof were deep purple sculptures of strange tentacled monsters. At the apex was a sculpture of an inverted two-tiered black step pyramid. She frowned, a frisson of fear running down her spine. She had seen that symbol before, in an ancient scroll where the author had called the opposing force 'the heretics.'  Petra had said that the dates were wrong, that it predated known human civilization on this land- 

Screams came from inside the building. Tae stormed up the stairs, metal-clad feet making her sound like an entire army company.

The inside of the temple was just as changed as the exterior. A great black altar stood in the center of the room in the same shape as the roof's major sculpture outside- an inverted ziggurat.  Purple floor tiles spiraled outwards around it. The columns that had lined the room had turned a deep purple and sculpted into them were the likenesses of layered multitudes of pain-filled faces, their mouths open in silent screams of agony. The three sun-knights of Jadus stood in the center, backs to the altar, their weapons drawn as their eyes darted around the room. Carmen held an unconscious owl huddled to her chest, Athena fluttering worriedly at her side.  Snow was cowering at her feet, obviously terrified. Petra stood in front of one of the pillars, a look of horror on her face as she reached a hand towards it, but holding herself back from actually touching the disgusting thing.

Odette was nowhere in sight.

"By all that is bright, where did that come from?" Yseult asked. "There is no one here but us."

"Where is Odette?" Tae asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Carmen looked up from the owl. The familiar was still, and Tae could not tell if Mantha was breathing. "Gone," she said brokenly. "I don't understand-" she stopped as Petra started swearing in an unfamiliar language.

All three sun-knights turned to face the irate elf. Barrett was already making a motion of dismissal. "Control yourself, trickster," he commanded. "That is an unholy tongue."

Petra's fists clenched. "I shouldn't have told her- should have warned her that illusions always cover traps- hells, she knew that, what was she thinking? And who would use such a powerful destructive spell as a defensive precaution? It's monstrous."

Tae realized what must have happened. Petra had approached Odette to discuss the illusion that covered the temple. Always one to be helpful, the sorceress had immediately tried to dispel it. And when she succeeded, she had triggered something hidden underneath the illusion. And it had completely destroyed her- body and soul. Tae's eyes snapped to the owl. Maybe not completely; Mantha was an extension of Odette and if he still existed, the spell could not have utterly annihilated her- something of her spirit had to remain.

"We must still find the wards," Yseult said, sheathing her sword and motioning for the men to do the same. "It is a shame about the sorceress-"

"She is the one who teleported us here," Athena spoke up angrily. The blonde half-elf continued, "We cannot leave here by other means. And I refuse to take part in a ritual of cleansing here without some means of escape. 'Tis a wicked place."

"And what can we do about it?" Yseult said in a calm voice. "Your priestess cannot return her from beyond without a body to place her in."

"But I can," Athena replied, a determined look on her face. "I cannot do it here in the temple confines, ‘tis nothing of life in here to draw upon, but ‘tis energy enough outside to let me create a body.”

“Athena, no,” Tae said, her voice soft but commanding.  “You are not yet recovered enough for a working of such size.  And this is not one you could lead Carmen through to help you.  It is beyond her abilities.”

“‘Tis why I said I would use the natural energies of the valley.  I can do this, cousin.” Her voice was strong and determined.  Tae knew there was no changing her mind on this.  And she knew better than her woodswise cousin how difficult the task Athena had set before herself.  And how dangerous.  “But I cannot summon her soul from wherever it has been banished to."

“I can,” Tae sighed.  “And if I cannot convince you not to do this-”

“Odette was the only person who could use the teleportation orb.  And she is our friend, cousin.  ‘Tis the right thing to do.”

“Then I will do what I can to make certain you succeed.”

"Do what you will,” Yseult spoke, “but Gethin, Barrett, and I must find the wards. The disturbances will grow worse with the disruption of the illusion. I doubt the original gaolers left it here, but whoever was here after them placed it as an extra security measure and with it, further bindings on the imprisoned sleeper. Likely they placed the trap as well. Better to slay someone who comes across this place than to chance them releasing the sleeper."

"That's horrible," Carmen said, passing the owl into Athena's arms.

"Do you not recognize the symbols here, woodswoman?  Is this terrible one unknown in your land?" The tall woman asked in a cold voice. "This is a temple of the Eater of Worlds. Better to cast a thousand innocent souls to the very depths of the Nine Hells than to break a single chain that binds the Nameless One. I had planned to release the sleeper that we might destroy the source of the blight, but this is no forgotten demigod. It must be an avatar of the Eater of Worlds bound here, and we would need an army to destroy it."

Carmen's eyes flashed angrily, but she did not continue the argument.  Sun-knights rarely changed their minds, and Tae was not certain Yseult's argument was wrong. Petra did not have the ability, but if she did, she could imagine the elf putting a similar trap up against such a thing. Better one dead innocent than the release of an avatar of the god of eternal darkness, the ender of all things. Tae knew she could not make that sort of decision; she tended to the here and now and worried less about consequences further down the road.

"If you are done wasting our time, we must find the wards. Do not disturb our work," Yseult said. She motioned for the two men to spread out. All three were very careful not to touch the pillars or altar.

Carmen glowered at them from where she stood near the entrance. "Remind me again, why did we come here?"

"Because we did not trust them with Odette," Tae said.

"Fine job we did of guarding her," Petra said bitterly as she joined them.

"Provided we can find where the spell sent her soul, we can still get her back," Tae said gently. "And with Mantha as a focus, the job is less difficult. Athena, perhaps you should start preparation for your ritual."

"You realize 'tis little chance I can find enough energy to return her to her proper human form, yes?" The blonde passed the owl to her cousin. Tae was relieved to feel his slow breathing.

"Alive as a bugbear beats dead," Carmen said.

"Maybe not as a bugbear," Petra said sourly, but with a half-hearted grin. "Maybe she'll get lucky and come back as an elf. Superior species, after all."

"Just find what's left of her," the taller woman replied. "And we can complain about Athena's chancy working later. Let's get started, shall we?" Both woodswomen left the temple and Tae listened to their footsteps disappear down the stairs to the edge of the grounds.

"Her soul didn't go anywhere," Petra said, watching the sun-knights slowly search the room. Yseult stood near the altar, eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer. The two men, on the opposite side of the naos, held their sunburst holy symbols before them, sweeping back and forth like water-dowsers. The anchors they were looking for probably felt less evil than the rest of the temple. Even with her abilities suppressed as much as she could, Tae could feel the pervading stink of evil. She made certain to avoid looking at the worst offenders: the black altar and the grotesque pillars. The altar radiated with the dark tang of blood sacrifice, making it easy to avoid looking at. 

The pillars, though.

The pillars drew you in, trapping your gaze in the terror-filled faces of its carvings. 

Tae had to fight to keep her eyes off them.

"What do you mean?"

Petra motioned to one of the pillars. Tae thought it might have been the one she had been standing in front of when the priestess had first entered the changed temple. "She was standing right in front of me. And when she triggered that trap, I saw what happened. The spell destroyed her body, and that pillar sucked her soul in. Those carvings," the redhead stopped, her eyes meeting Tae's. They looked hollow. "They're not carvings. At least, not entirely."

Tae let her eyes be drawn to the pillar Petra had pointed towards. The agonized faces were extremely detailed. No two even came close to looking similar. She thought she understood the horrible idea Petra was working towards. "They are previous sacrifices," she said, one hand raising unconsciously to grasp at her amulet. "Every time someone was killed here, they were imprisoned here as well."

"That's what it looks like," Petra said flatly. "And I'm going to have to metaphysically make my way through all of that to find her. Hope your nerves are up for this." She moved closer to the pillar, a determined look on her face.

Tae closed her eyes and said a soft prayer of guidance, relaxing into the view of the magical overlay of the world, seeing the ley lines around them warped by the slow manipulations of the temple's prisoner. She felt close by for the faint energy that kept Mantha breathing. A silvery-blue ribbon threaded from the owl and in the direction of the pillar they stood before. The pillar itself churned in her sight, as if it could sense her unseeing gaze upon it. She resisted the urge to open her eyes to stop from viewing the coiling mass of evil. "I found the cord. Are you ready? Odette will not be the only soul trapped there and only a few of them will passively let you by. She should still be close though."

Petra grabbed her free hand firmly.  Silvery-green light blended with Tae's own rich purple energies where their hands were clasped. "No choice." Tae heard her slap her other hand against the column and watched as a silvery-green streak raced along the cord into the churning mass, leaving a faint trail glowing behind it. Petra's hand clenched hers tightly, but the elf did not speak, nor draw back out.

Time stopped as they stood there, her connecting Mantha to Odette, leaving just enough of a leak through for Petra to sense and follow. They could not leave their minds wide open, no matter how much easier it would make finding Odette. There was no guarantee the morass could not cut them off. And then Petra would be lost with no trail back, and Tae would be left reeling by magical backlash.

And then she could feel Petra stop, some force blocking her.

"Something has hold of her. It knows we're trying to free her and it never releases its victims," Petra spoke in a soft, far-away voice."It's dragged her in to the center with it."

Tae refocused her closed gaze, trying to see into the swirling mass of energies between them. She could make out a malevolent pulse of deep purple energy at the center of the storm, drawing in the others in the slow, inexorable way of something that knew it had centuries to process its meal. It must have felt her link Mantha to Odette. And it had pulled Odette deep within the maelstrom away from them. Either to finish her off before rescue, or to draw the two rescuers in to eat as well. And the only thing keeping Petra from falling in as well was her tight grip on Tae's hand.

"We all know how good you are at stealing things," Tae said, trying to infuse a lightness into her words that she did not feel. Through the strange four-way connection, she could feel the awful presence that Petra had stopped at. Not one of the countless victims, but neither was it the actual god- its presence was far too weak for that. She could feel the not-inconsiderable power it bent towards them, demanding surrender. Demanding worship and blood and death.

Tae wished she had a free hand to grab her amulet. It was a security blanket she had not been able to give up. But the thought of the holy symbol gave her an idea.  And while touching it for focus was usual, it was not actually necessary. Not for what she would have to do. She took a deep breath, and reached inwards for the Protector's presence within herself, careful not to lose focus on her link with Mantha, careful not to withdraw too far from Petra's narrowed energies.

"I am the sword that protects, the flame lit against the hungry dark," she whispered. They needed help. And who better to ask than the Protector?  But the division of her energies left her dizzy, and she had to fight to continue her benediction. "I fear no foe, for I am the will of my god. Let my blow be his and let him drive back the evil that threatens."

"Please," came Petra's almost silent whisper, adding her voice to Tae's prayer. “I do not ask for aid for myself, but for one who I have hurt in my folly." Tae could hear the struggle in her voice, each word a battle of wills from the depths as the terrible strength of the bodiless maw crushed down on Odette and, through her, upon them as well.

There was a strange shift and she felt, more than heard, an answer. It was not whom she expected, though.

_'Pardon me, cousin.'_

The presence that approached was not the warm, somewhat remote love she felt from the Protector.  Nor was it as crushing a presence as when the Protector had first spoken to her heart.  It was wilder, merrier, and somehow lonelier.  Some demigod of the Protector's Court she had never had contact with before.  And while her thoughts still dwelt on who it might be, it nudged her out of place and spoke through her.

 _“Do you know what you ask, child?”_ Tae could hear the echo in her voice, the sound of whoever of the Court had come. It was an odd sensation, still being able to feel her body and yet have no power over it. Very- disconnected. _“It is not within my power to simply free her. There must be an exchange.”_

"I know that better than most, my lord."  Petra's voice was still far-away, but no longer gasping out each word like there was no breath in her lungs.  "But I will also pay for my mistakes."

He- and it was a he, she could feel the dichotomous nature of herself feminine and him masculine inhabiting one place- was going to swap Petra's and Odette's places.  This was not a rescue.

Tae wanted to tug her hand free of Petra’s, force her to break out. There was no guarantee Athena could create something to house Odette's soul and then they would lose both of them.  She could feel herself going in circles, breaking apart, not wanting to hear this awful choice. It was not a choice; self-centered though Petra often was, her loyalty given was a life placed before her own.  And she felt the presence pat her patronizingly on the head and she was no longer falling apart anymore, she was angry, and she tugged-

And whichever of the Court he was, he swatted her away like she was a flea and she was trapped with only her ears and her other sense of vision to passively view the world.  And never did the flavor of his presence change from amusement and all she could do was sit and stew in her anger, trapped within herself.

 _"Her fate shall be yours, young petitioner,"_ he spoke through her mouth, that odd echo still there.  A great arrow of power zapped through her, to her hand clasped in Petra's, along Petra's arm into the morass, and everything exploded and her vision went white.  The presence withdrew out of her, pinched her bottom merrily, and disappeared away.

She collapsed at the sudden release and felt Petra fall next to her.  She drew herself on up shaky hands and knees, only dimly noticing the awful pillars breaking all around the room.  She could not remember what happened to Mantha.  Her eyes sought out Petra.

She lay small and still on her back, eyes closed.  Tae breathed a sigh of relief at the rise and fall of her chest.  Her eyes suddenly snapped open and she shot straight up, slamming forcefully into Tae. Already unsteady, Tae fell loudly on her side.  She watched through unfocused eyes as Petra shot a hand out to her side and lightning arced across the room, its crackling energies crashing into the dark altar and through it into the trio of sun-knights who had gathered just beyond it.  She collapsed backwards, eyes rolling up her head.  So did the sun-knights.

Tae had no time to wonder at what Petra had done, or why the knights had gathered, or whether Yseult, Gethin, and Barrett still lived.  More bolts of silvery-blue lightning raced into the room through the crumbling entranceway to slam into the altar's remains.  The entire room seemed to explode into dust and breaking stone.

Tae barely had time to throw herself over Petra's unprotected body before the roof fell on them.  She felt something hit her head, and there was a flash of blue before the pain knocked her out.

\----

Athena sat on her knees, frowning in concentration as she wove her fingers together like she was a child playing cat’s cradle with string.  On the opposite end of the bedroll Carmen had laid out for her, Snow sat on his haunches, ears perked forward with interest.  Carmen couldn’t see the ley lines the half-elf was manipulating, but she could feel the low throb of energy pulsing throughout the valley with each twitch of Athena’s nimble fingers.

If she was honest, she didn’t think this plan could work.  Athena was too drained to perform the ritual correctly and the shortcut she was taking- using the energy of the flora and fauna of the valley- seemed dubious at best.  Using her own energy barely guaranteed a humanoid form for a body, the addition of the natural world could mean Odette would be brought back as a tree.  Athena didn’t seem worried about the matter and Carmen had bowed to her superior knowledge, but she had her doubts.

Was it really wise to use the energy of life that had grown in the shadow of a temple housing an immeasurable evil?  Who was to say it hadn’t warped its environs in the unknown amount of time it had been leaking its dark energies out?

She consoled herself by standing watch over the murmuring half-elf, constantly scanning the surroundings for any sign of movement.  But the animals were silent and still, hidden away in their burrows and nests.  There was no wind to move the air, leaving her wondering what caused the faint tremors in the branches of the scrubby brush that filled the area.   With every slow breath Athena took, she could feel a low thrum of anticipation coursing through the valley. 

Valley didn’t really seem the word for the location, Carmen thought as she looked at the tall cliffs rising in the distance.  Valleys were mountain folds, going along in mostly one direction like a child's scribble of a road.  This area was basically circular, perhaps a kilometre at its widest. There were no exits that Carmen could spot- its walls were steep cliffs rising high up with no visible caves.  From the air, it must look like someone had punched a very big fist into the mountains.  Of course, there were no actual mountains visible above the valley’s walls. So she could not be certain their location was truly the mountains of northern Telubra.

She turned her gaze back to Athena.  The energy the half-elf was weaving together had moved to the bedroll.  It was basically formless, but had gained enough power that Carmen could actually see it swirling as Athena wove more in, and she was not as inclined to see magic as the other women she traveled with.

It wasn’t taking up much room on the bedroll.  Half of it, if she was generous.

“Shouldn’t it be taking a form?” Carmen asked, resting her arms behind her back to keep down the urge to poke at the mass.

“Odette’s soul is the final requirement,” Athena replied in a tired voice as she looked up to Carmen.  Her fingers never stopped moving.  “The combination of energies will decide upon the shape once everything is in place.”

The hairs on the back of Carmen's neck rose as a great rush of energy came darting out of the temple directly towards them.  Carmen wasn't really one for metaphysical discussion, but she was pretty certain Odette's soul wasn't that large, no matter how good her heart.

“What in the world?” Whatever else Athena was going to say was lost by the sudden crash of the invading energies into Athena's carefully woven working and her vision went white.  She shook her head, trying to clear the glare from her eyes.  There was a ruffle of a hand on top of her head and whatever that energy had been disappeared as quickly as it came. The sudden stillness was oppressive.

Her vision took longer to recover.  Too worried about tripping into Athena's working with her blind stumbling, she merely sat down where she had been standing to wait it out.

She could hear two other people breathing.  Whatever else had happened, Athena had managed to pull of the improbable- creating a working that drew just as much from the surroundings as it did one's self for a ritual that was only supposed to work using personal energy.

As her vision came back, she could see Athena leaning heavily against Snow's flank, the wolf cautiously nosing the still body on the bedroll.  She hadn't even heard him move.

On the bedroll was a small humanoid form.  Basically human, really.  Brown hair almost as dark as Odette's had originally been, the skin paler than her original olive hue, two arms, two legs, ten fingers, and likely ten toes.  Carmen couldn't actually tell, since Odette was still wearing the same clothes, if smaller, that she had been when she- disappeared.  The serious difference was the height.  Odette had been a few centimetres shy of two metres.  Now she looked half that.  The face was different, but there was something of the old Odette still in the rounded cheek bones and nose.  The ears were entirely different- cutting back away from her skull even longer and sharper than Petra's pointed ones.

“Ye be all right?” she asked Athena.  The half-elf looked just as gray and wan as she had three days ago.  Worse, actually.  Snow seemed to be the only thing keeping her upright.

She slowly turned her head out of Snow's fur.  “No,” she managed to say.  “No.”  

Athena was actually looking a little wild around the eyes.  Carmen rose up to her feet, circling around the still body to approach her.  She spared a moment of thought to wonder how long Odette would be unconscious before kneeling on the other side of the blonde.

Anything the two of them were planning on saying was thrown completely out of their thoughts as a loud crack rang out from the temple.  Carmen fell back onto her rear end at the sudden noise.  Athena merely made a discontented grumbling noise, too tired to turn her head to check it out.

Carmen had a firm a grip on her reflexes when the next surprise happened.

Odette shot straight up, energy crackling all around her, a pale nimbus of lavenders and pinks. A small part of her noted how strong it was, to let someone as magic-blind as her be able to see it.  Athena winced as some of it flailed too closely to her.  Odette stared wildly around her, barely taking note of the two women at her side.  Carmen watched her hands move in a familiar fashion and the crackling energy snapped back into the sorceress and then shot forward through her hands into the temple as lightning.

The cracking noise from inside the temple became the roar of tumbling rock and Carmen watched in horror as the building collapsed on Tae, Petra, and three rather annoying sun-knights. She turned her gaze back to Odette, mouth open to snap at her- what was she thinking, was she even thinking?  But the sorceress had already collapsed backwards, apparently unconscious again.

What in the nine hells was going on?

“Were those wings?”  Athena tiredly mumbled, her eyes on Odette's once again still form.

\----

She was woken from unconsciousness by movement and slowly took stock of the situation.

She was trapped under heavy stone- the ceiling, of course.  Her head was aching, more likely from magical expenditure than from anything physical, for she had managed to somehow duck her head out of the way.  Her back seemed to be bearing most of the weight, leaving her breathing in short, painful gasps.  She could only hope the weight had spread enough to not break anything. As it was, she was not certain she could feel her legs over the agony her lower spine was in.  Her hands felt free to move, which was something.

She slowly turned her head to the side and watched Petra's eyes blink slowly open.  Tae thought she saw a flash of blue before Petra turned bright green eyes to her, a question in them she could not seem to find a voice for.

Likely because Tae, or more specifically her armor, was crushing the air out of her lungs.

"The temple collapsed," Tae said softly.  "Anything broken?" The cut across Petra's forehead was apparent, after all.

The sour look on Petra's face said that was either the wrong answer or an obvious question.  Tae was not certain which.  "Det?" Petra managed to gasp out.

Tae had answered the wrong question then.  Their current circumstances were of less interest than Odette's fate.  She wished she had actual news.  "I do not know. But if we did manage to save her, at least they were performing the ritual outside."

The snort and half-grin she got in return said if Petra did have any injuries, they were not life-threatening. Tae would have let out a breath of relief if she had any.

"I can feel stones shifting.  I think they are digging around trying to find us.  Which is good, because whatever is pinning me down seems to have cut off all feeling to my legs and I do not know if I am bleeding to death."

Her attempt at levity was a bit macabre for her taste, but Petra seemed to appreciate it.  She closed her eyes, tilting her head back. "Why'd temple collapse?" she slurred out. She shifted minutely, trying to get enough room to better breathe.

"What do you remember?" Tae sidestepped.  It seemed more important.

"Fuzzy," the redhead replied, brow furrowing.  Tae did not know how to reply and silently watched blood seep slowly down Petra's forehead from her oozing cut. "All mushed about. Got stuck somewhere. Asked Elisar fer help."

Elisar Ibryiil, she thought sourly. Of course. The Lonely Trickster, patron god of rogues and mischief and one of the greater powers of the Protector's Court.  It would explain the complete ease with which he had slapped her down when Tae had tried to force him out.  With the Protector as her patron, it would have been far more difficult for the demigod she had assumed him to be.  The upper echelon of the Court had more liberties than the demigods that usually answered requests such as hers.  Why had he shown up? Presently though, it did not matter.

"Your patron," Tae said cuttingly, "goosed me."

Had Petra any air, Tae knew, she would have burst into happy, amused laughter. As it was, she gave a short delighted squeal.

"And I think he put a doom on you." Petra sobered up instantly, eyes snapping open to stare at her intently.  "He said Odette's fate would be yours.  I thought he meant to exchange you-" Tae trailed off.

“Never tha' easy or obvious,” the small woman murmured.

Neither of them seemed to know what to say next.  In the silence, debris trickled down around them and she could hear the sound of someone working above.

"Prisoner had somethin' else in mind f’r Odette," Petra finally said, looking past Tae, eyes unfocused, as if she was trying to see through the stone to the workers above. “S’gonna be a problem."

"I really don't know how we can fix it."

Petra frowned. "Can feel somethin' else here. But,” she paused to regain her breath.  “May not notice changes m'self. You'll have t' keep an eye on me."

It was perhaps the most serious the cheeky elf had ever been.  Tae could not read her usually expressive eyes and felt a soft thrum of dread.  "What are you talking about?"

"Whole lotta souls it had.” She paused to look up at the rubble above her.  “Never been here in m' life, but can remember helpin' build this place."

Ice ran down Tae's back as she took the information in. And remembered the flash of blue. Petra had made it out of the morass of undigested souls, but the evil at the center of it- either the bound god's avatar or one of its lesser creations- had apparently attached a rider to her.  One of its first victims, perhaps, killed during the evil temple's construction.

"When we get out of here- after we return the sun-knights- we need to perform an exorcism on you."  Tae had no idea if it would work. But it would have to be done as soon as possible.  Two souls inhabiting one body; given enough time, either the stronger would kick the weaker out, or they would merge. Either way, Petra would not come out of the experience still herself.

Petra latched onto the non sequitur. "Knights?"

"I think they are dead," Tae replied, glad for the change in subject.  The less Petra thought about the things she would have to go through to try and get rid of her unwelcome passenger, the better.  "The only reason the ceiling did not completely crush us is because of your strong survival instinct."

Petra blinked at her, her confusion very evident.  "Wasn' awake fer tha' part," she said with a frown.  "I mean, I woke up f’r a bit- sorta remember bashin' inta yer chin-"

Tae huffed in laughter, darkly.  "They were, perhaps, not entirely your instincts. Where do you think your arms are?"  She had not noticed it at first, herself. She had thought she had ducked in time.  She could not feel Petra's arms, not through her armor, their light weight not noticeable compared to the great mass of the ceiling pressing down on her lower back and likely her legs.  But before passing out from pain, she had felt something on her head- not stone falling, as she had thought at the time, but arms wrapping protectively around it.  And then that flash of blue. 

The same blue Petra's eyes had flashed when she had first opened them.

The same blue that the lightning had been.

\----

The temple was in ruins, crushed in on itself just like the one at the top of the mount in Khoresbar.  It wasn’t just from Odette's spell- as destructive as it had been, the noise had started earlier.  Carmen was already scrambling about the rubble, trying to find the others.

Athena wished she had the energy to move to help her.  Tae was in there.  But all she could do was lean her weight against Snow's broad bulk.  The wolf whined softly, setting his ears back against his head.

“You're right,” she murmured into his fur as she watched Carmen heaving cut stone blocks like they were hollow and filled with air.  “You could probably sniff them out better than she can.”

She eased her legs out from underneath her, leaning heavily on the wolf to keep from overbalancing.  That done, she leaned forward, resting her chin on her knees and locking her hands around her ankles to keep balanced.  “Go find Tae, dearest.”  Her weight removed, the wolf shot off towards Carmen, paws sending rubble clattering everywhere.

She was so tired.  

Her eyes drifted back down to Odette's still form.  She had only performed this working once before, as a test by her teacher to prove she could do it.  She didn't remember the man acting the same way Odette had- snapping up like she'd been frightened from a nightmare and choking the air with excess energy.  But that had been a fellow woodsworker, not even a Wood-speaker, and he hadn’t the same access to magic that Odette did, so perhaps that reaction was normal for sorceresses.

That also didn't explain the extra energy that had come out of the temple.  She had recognized the presence of a member of the Court and she worried about what Tae had had to promise to rescue Odette in such a manner.  One couldn't get something for nothing, especially from a god.  He had warped her spell too- whatever form Odette was originally to take had mutated at the touch of the fey god, making the body fey as well.  Athena was fairly certain those had been dragonfly wings sprouting out of the woman's back.  Odette was such a stable personality that there had been a good chance she would have simply retained human form.  The addition of power from her fey escort had turned her into a pixie.

Odette groaning and raising her hand to her head interrupted Athena's thoughts.

“Easy,” she murmured, her voice soft like she was coaxing a skittish animal out of cover.  “It takes time to settle into a new body.  Do you remember what happened?”

The sorceress slowly sat up.  She was right- those had been iridescent dragonfly wings growing from Odette's back.  She wasn't certain what magic had allowed her gown's fabric to part to let them out.  How would she take the dress off?

“Petra said there was an illusion covering the temple.  I remember casting a dispel, and,” the brunette paused, closing her eyes to focus.  “Everything went a bit fuzzy, and then I woke up here.”  She opened her eyes, still looking in Athena's direction.

Memory was attached to the physical realm, then, not the soul. Not completely, at least.  Tae would like to know that, Athena thought.  At that, she remembered what else was happening.  “You died,” she told other woman.  She knew her face was filled with pain and worry. With that much destruction, was there any chance Tae could crawl out of there, or Carmen dig her out before it crushed the people trapped inside?  But Odette would think it was for her.  “You triggered some sort of defensive spell someone had put in place, Petra said.  You just- disappeared. And the crusader didn't care, because she had gotten what she wanted from you and we couldn't just leave your spirit there, not in that awful place.”  Her eyes cut to the rubble.  Carmen and Snow had zeroed in on some location and were busy pulling cracked blocks out.

Odette followed her gaze.  “What happened?”

“I don't know.  ‘Twas this noise inside, and then you woke up with far too much energy and shot it all into the temple and then it just collapsed.”  Athena thought she sounded a little hysterical.

“I meant more along the lines of, if I died, how did I end up here, but thank you for explaining what happened to the temple.”

She giggled.  That was probably a little hysterical sounding too.  She couldn't seem to stop giggling either.

“Athena.”  Soft small hands touched her hands, tracing up her arms in a calming motion.  How odd.  Shouldn't she be calming the woman she had just brought back from the dead?  Had she not noticed the wings? They were hard to miss.  “Athena.”

The hands moved away from her arms and a sharp jolt of pain in her face snapped her to proper awareness.

“Sorry, sorry,” she murmured.  “I'm just so tired and Carmen's over there trying to find Tae and Petra and I can't help because I can't even move and you can't help because you probably only weigh half as much as Petra and Carmen can lift her with one hand-”

Firm fingers grasped her chin, making her look into Odette's eyes.  “You need to calm down,” the brunette said seriously.  “Your pulse is racing and that is burning your reserves up even quicker.  Deep breaths.  Once you calm down, you know you can reach Snow to ask what he has found.”

She could, couldn't she?  She had been so busy tying herself up in knots she had forgotten the gray wolf.  She closed her eyes, breathing slowly in and out.  She could feel her connection with Snow, the energy he was letting her borrow to stay conscious and the worried love he felt for her, feeling her fear and exhaustion but also knowing she had given him an order he was to obey.  Find Tae.  But the connection felt weak.  It was fading.  She had spent too much energy in the working, and now the only thing keeping the bond in place was the magic of her fey heritage.  But that wouldn’t last.  She was only half-elf, the fey blood too weak to keep the bond in place permanently.  There was no way to tell what trauma would snap it entirely.

“I am the one who should be panicking,” Odette said.  “I used to be bigger than you.  Also, I can see the ley lines here.  That is supposed to take me a few minutes of meditation.”

“Fey are closer to magic,” Athena said.  The rapid flutter of thought had evened out to calmer levels.  But she could feel the hysteria still bubbling under the surface.  “I can see them out of the corner of my eyes and it just takes a moment's concentration to bring them into focus.  Petra has to concentrate to shut it out.”

Tae was alive, Snow knew.  He was confused about Petra- her scent had changed; the three sun-knights were dead.  The smell of death made them easier for him to find and, once she understood the information he was trying to relay, Carmen had simply marked the spot to concentrate on finding the survivors first.

“They're here!” Carmen shouted.

Odette clambered up to her feet.  Athena stretched a hand out in front of her, gauging her chances of repeating the move without stumbling over herself and collapsing.  Judging by the shaky droop of her hand, the odds were good she wouldn't even make it to her feet.  Odette staggered off like a newborn foal trying its legs out for the first time.  Which was true.  Odette hadn't ever used that set of legs before.  Her wings fluttered behind her, stirring up dust.

Carmen had already hoisted Tae up in a fireman's carry.  Athena could see her cousin waving her arms, pointing downwards.  Carmen disappeared out of sight, popping back up with Petra tucked under her free arm.  The elf was kicking a bit, obviously wanting to be put down, and Athena watched Tae reach a hand down to smack the small girl's head.  She could see Carmen straining under the load- obviously from Tae and her armor, but Petra's wriggling couldn't be helping.

Carmen lurched some ways away from the hole she had dug before setting Petra down on a stable block.  She eased Tae off of her shoulders to watch Odette clumsily climb up to where they were.  Carmen pulled the tiny sorceress up into a bear hug, slapping her shoulders.  Curiously, Petra flinched away from the reunion.  Tae set one hand on Odette's arm, as if she couldn't trust her eyes the woman was really there.

It was really sweet, she thought vaguely.  Her vision grew blurry, and her grip on her ankles weakened.  She was just  
so  
tired.

\----

Carmen gently set Odette back down.  “Sorry about the manhandling,” the woodswoman said, clasping the sorceress' arms, grinning widely. She opened her mouth to speak, when a yelp from Snow interrupted her.  The wolf went trotting tiredly down the rubble and Carmen looked up.  “Hells,” she said, racing past the wolf.  

Tae's eyes followed the path of their route.  Athena was lying slumped over on what looked to be a bedroll.  Exhaustion, no doubt.  She had warned her cousin that there would be dire consequences.  She turned her eyes back to the hole in the rubble Carmen had dug.  There was something she needed to see before going to her cousin's side.

“This has not been a good day,” Petra said from where she sat, eyes on the unconscious half-elf.  “Not for any of us.”

“I am a bit surprised it took her that long to fall,” Odette said as she took a seat on the temple's former roof, panting quietly.  She needed the break before she climbed back down.  It would take weeks before she grew used to her new limbs.  Or so Tae's experience had been.  Reattaching limbs was not really the same thing, but the man had complained about his new arm's responses being different than they used to be.  “She was hysterical when I awoke.  Two greater workings back-to-back is never a good idea.  I cannot believe you allowed her do that, Tae.”

Tae shrugged.  “She would not be persuaded away from the ritual.  And I was not certain she was wrong.”

“What happened to the temple?  Athena mentioned something about me casting a spell at it, but that it was already making noises before I sat up.”

“I had a bad reaction to the-” Petra paused, searching for a word.  Tae was not certain how to describe the work either.  “I don't know that it was a proper working or invocation.”  She shrugged.  “Tae said I blew up the altar.  You've got more magic than me, so you took out the rest of the temple.  Probably just a weird reaction to where your soul had been trapped.”

“Trapped?” Odette repeated, both eyebrows arching.  

Tae limped over to the great slab of stone Carmen had pulled off of them.  It was a monstrous feat of strength.  The woman had unfathomable depths when it came to instinctive adrenaline-fueled reactions.  She doubted that Carmen could lift it now, but all that mattered was that she was able to lift it then.

“The trap you set off destroyed your body, but the prisoner here had enough control free of the wards to route you into his own personal stock of soul energy to feast on,” Petra explained. “Otherwise you would already be re-entering the wheel for a new shot at life.”

There was an impact crater where Petra's forearms had connected with it, sending cracks down much of its length, twisting the slab up into a slight v-shape.  Tae kicked her foot into it.  The hollow was just big enough to allow two people to keep from being crushed under its bulk, though it had not been enough to keep the rubble that collapsed on top of it from pressing down onto them.  Her back throbbed painfully, but she did not have the energy to heal it.  Nature would have to take its course. At least for now.

“Is it still trapped here?” Odette asked.

“I think the knights finished their work before the roof collapsed on them.  It isn't giving off the same creepy feeling that it was when we arrived.”

There was no telling how long they would have to stay here in this mountain valley.  Odette would not be able to use the orb of teleportation for at least a day- not unless she wanted to end up collapsing like Athena had.  And there were still the sun-knights to dig up, to return to their temple.  Temples.  Yseult was not from the same chapterhouse as the two men.  And with the crusader dead, they would have to plead their case to her superior.  Or else just turn all three bodies in at Reeds and head out for the Lothar Heights.  But that would be irresponsible.

“You realize I can see the warping in your personal energies, right?” Odette said flatly.  Tae looked up.  “I think that shadow qualifies as 'creepy.'”

“I told you I had a bad reaction,” Petra said with a studied air of nonchalance.  She was leaning back across the block on one elbow, legs crossed, looking at where Carmen had sat Athena back up.  Snow was lying on the bedroll, head tucked into his paws.  Tae had never seen the wolf look so depressed.  “It should fade away, provided I stay away from spellcasting while it's still there.”

“I doubt it will be that simple to clear up.”

“Not like there's anything else I can do about it.” Petra's glare told Tae she was not as unaffected by the discussion as the elf would like to be.

“You realize I will be keeping an eye on you all the same, yes?”

“I would expect nothing less,” Petra said with a sunny grin.

Tae clambered away from the broken roof she had been inspecting to return to the other two women.

“You know about this, Tae?” Odette asked as she helped her to stand up.

It was rather terrifying how light the sorceress was.  Petra complained about being frequently mistaken for a child, but Odette was now the size of a six-year-old.  With Carmen's almost masculine build, people were going to assume they were a family unit, not merely travelers.  It was a problem to bring up later.  

“I was there for it,” Tae replied.  “Elisar Ibryiil showed up for my invocation.  He must have thought messing around with the imprisoned sleeper was funny.”

“Did you choose him for a patron because you wanted to grow up to be just like him or would nobody else in the Court have you?” Odette asked Petra in fond exasperation.

“He's the one who felt right for me.”  Petra hopped up off the block and started the climb down.  Odette laid a hand on Tae’s arm to keep her from following directly.

“Was there something else?”

“Where is Mantha?  I cannot feel his presence any longer.”  The sorceress looked extremely tired as she spoke.  Tae knew the other woman had to know the answer.  She was just hoping that Tae could give her another answer.  A better one than what had happened.

“He was your sacrifice,” she said gently, covering Odette’s hands with her own.  “I thought you understood that.  You do not cheat death without paying some price.”  She did not look towards her cousin, though it was a narrow thing.  The other blonde would not be performing any natural magic any time soon.  And Snow's body language said something else was going on as well.

“I know,” Odette said softly.  “I had just hoped that it was otherwise.”

“I’m sorry,” Tae said.  The burrowing owl had been Odette’s constant companion since before she had met the woman four years prior.  The bond between sorceress and familiar was an even closer one than the ones woodsworkers, or even the far more magically-inclined wood-speakers, formed with the beasts they worked with.  Snow was very much independent of Athena and was free at any time to say he would no longer work with her.  Mantha had practically been an extension of Odette’s will, with a bit of a snooty personality left over from his time as a free bird.  It was a bond only death could break.  And it had.

Odette gave her a weak smile.  “I should not have expected otherwise.  My death killed him.”

“No,” Tae shook her head.  “He stuck around long enough to help us find you.”

“We should probably catch up with Petra,” Odette said, her eyes skating away from Tae’s.

They did not speak as they made their way down from the temple.  Petra had stopped halfway down, haphazardly juggling in one hand some broken tiles she had found. It was slow going down to where she stood.  Odette was new to her small size and kept overestimating the distances between things to jump between.  She needed to climb up and over things she had once merely hopped over.  Tae, her maneuverability already impeded by her armor, was further held back by the twinges in her back.  She thought it possible she had torn something.  She should have tried to heal it before attempting this descent.

Petra did not say anything as they reached her, merely cocked her head and gave Odette a piercing look.  Tae recalled Petra saying she used to have a familiar, years ago.  She probably understood better than Tae what was going on in Odette’s head.

“This is not a fun climb,” Petra said, tossing the tiles back into the rubble.  They were the purple ones Tae had seen earlier, with the swirly spirals.  It was not a particularly foreboding design and she wondered who had decided on it, the god or the avatar who had overseen the building here.

“As you said, it has not been a good day,” Odette replied, pausing in her descent for breath.

“Have you tried flying yet?  You’ve got wings and for all that common sense says they won’t hold your weight, they should work.  I’ve seen pixies darting about like they were five-year-olds powered by maple candy.”

“I thought that experimentation could wait until we had softer surroundings for me to crash on,” the sorceress said archly.

Petra shrugged and started the climb down again.  Tae watched for a moment, worried.  She was less nimble than her usual self.  These climbs usually had her clambering over everything, down and up again, bothering her slower fellow climbers.  Her outrageous acrobatics had been traded in for energy-conserving movements.  Tae did not think it was her legs, not with Petra flinching back every time she knocked an arm into something.  She made a mental note to have the elf roll up her undershirt's long sleeves.  She had obviously stretched the truth a bit when she said she was okay.  Especially considering the way she had curled one arm in to her chest to protect it.

“We still need to recover the sun-knights' bodies,” Tae said as they arrived at the base of the shattered temple.

“It's going to have a wait a few hours,” Petra said with a wheezing breath.  “I don't think anyone's up to climbing back up there and digging through that mess of stone for a while.”

“You're just lazy,” Carmen shouted from where she knelt with Athena.  Tae could see even from this distance that her cousin was so pale she was gray.

Odette choked out a bark of laughter.  “I think you are the only one with any energy to speak of, Carmen.”

“Guess you should have joined me in my bladework exercises these past few days then,” the woodswoman said with a smile.  “Then maybe your stamina levels would be better.”

“I did,” Athena said so faintly Tae almost didn't hear her.

“Yes, but you always do,” Carmen said as she patted her on the shoulder. “'Tis those lazy layabouts I was talking to.  Imagine how bad you'd feel if I hadn't had you train with me.”

They finished walking over to the two woodswomen.  Snow woofed a quiet greeting.  His tail remained curled under him, his ears drooping with lethargic disinterest.

“Once we get them dug up, what then?” Petra asked, collapsing down onto bedroll.

“That is a little uncouth, even for you,” Odette said, easing down next to the elf.

“They're already dead.  What does it matter my verb use?”  Petra rolled her eyes.

“We need to decide where we are going,” Tae said, trying to head off the irrelevant discussion.  She did not try to sit down, instead leaning against a nearby tree.  Her back was killing her, but her synapses were still fried by the divine invocation she had performed and she couldn't cast a healing spell to fix it.  “Barrett and Gethin were from Reeds.  Yseult was from the western coastline.  And she probably wanted to report to the other crusaders in Khorevail.”

“But if she was sent about the false report at Folken Abbey, do we really want to go anywhere near there now?” Carmen asked.

“They're not part of the Sund judiciary, they can't actually arrest us,” Petra said.  “Not that I really want to go back there again.  They're well on their way to a theocracy, and then the crusaders really can make arrests instead of this blackmail thing Yseult was trying to pull on us.”

“Not even to get paid for this work?” Tae asked.

“Returning there with three dead sun-knights and just our word that the temple is safely under wraps again?  Even with a crusader's ability to sense the truth, they're not going to just accept our word on that matter.”

“If the temple's wards even were really fixed,” Athena said in her quiet voice.  “I know something has changed, but how can we tell if the leak has completely stopped?”

“It has,” Tae said with certainty.  “Even with all my concentration focused on the incantation, I could feel the moment the sun-knights fixed the wards.  They were almost completely unraveled when we arrived-”

“You could tell that just from the fact I could feel it,” Petra said.  “I'm not the most sensitive to divine energies and it still had my skin crawling.”

“We return the bodies to Khorevail,” Odette said.  “Yseult was senior, and all sun-knights go there to the main temple for their promotions.  They will have records of Barrett and Gethin, as new as they were.”

“And what about the letters between Lightbringer Roland and the head abbot at Folken?” Tae asked.

“The Jaden clergy imploding is not our problem,” Petra said flatly.  “We should keep out of it.  That includes bringing the matter to their attention at all.”

“That isn't right,” Carmen said.  “How many people died at that abbey, do you know?  If someone knew the brothers had gone insane, they should have told someone with the power to do something about it.”

“Considering they currently think we're the ones who did it and not the brothers, I really don't think they're going to believe us when we say otherwise.  And bringing up Lightbringer Roland would be just plain stupid.  He was the fourth-most senior Lightbringer in Sundabar and probably the most humanitarian.  Attacking his legacy with outlandish stories is good cause for the sun-knights to lock us up, Sund judiciary system or no.  Without the letters, there is no proof.  The investigator has no doubt squirreled them away somewhere, if he didn't burn them.  And even with the letters, they could accuse us of forgery.”

“We cannot simply do nothing,” Odette said.  “Half of Caldonia accepts Jadus as their primary god.  There is no telling what would happen if we do not let someone know of the transformation the priesthood has undergone.”

Tae frowned at the temple ruins.  “Yseult did not know how long the leak had been here,” she said non sequitor.

“What?”

“Do you think the evil leaking out from here is directly connected to the events at the abbey?” Odette asked, catching on faster than Petra.

“It was Jaden priests who originally performed the binding here,” Tae said slowly, trying to give herself time to think.  It seemed so clear in her head, but she did not know if she could explain it clearly.  “The Eater of Worlds goes by a different name where we are from-”

“The Chained God,” Athena interrupted.  She was finally beginning to show some color.  “That castle we first met Petra in, there was a private chapel dedicated to him.”

“The holy symbols are different too.  That is what confused me,” she told Petra, reminding her of the ancient scroll they had seen in Heron’s Rest’s records.  “It should be an open eye inside a pyramid.  The inversion of the design and the addition of tiers threw me off.”

“What does that have to do with what is happening here?” Carmen asked.

“Not anything directly, I just wanted to point out that this is not some regional god we are discussing,” Tae replied.  “Back to the matter at hand, though.  Jadus is the god who led the fight to imprison him.   Let us say you were locked away for millennia and one of your avatars managed to slip its noose,” she said to Petra.  “What would you do?”

“Me personally?”  The redhead gave her a feral grin, sharp and full of teeth.  Tae was not reassured.  “Revenge is a dish best served cold.  I’d be less interested in charging in headlong to kill them all and instead start at the bottom and work my way up until every single person related to the matter was gone.  Preferably in tiny bits.  And I might rub the fact of the matter in with the higher ups.  The little people wouldn’t really matter for that, so I wouldn’t bother explaining it to them before I killed them.   And then I’d get around to releasing the boss and letting him do the same thing on the outer planes to the gods who are still around from back then.”

There was a lengthy awkward silence as they all stared at her.

“What?” she asked suspiciously.  “You asked what I would do.  What do you think I’m going to do once we get hold of the people who took Crunch from us?”

“Everyone else in favor of never letting Petra make plans again?” Carmen asked.

Petra glowered at her, not amused in the slightest.  “Just because the rest of you are lily-livered when it comes to a little bloodshed-”

“Petra, it is a matter of us being better people than them.  There will be no slaughtering anybody related to Crunch’s disappearance,” Tae said firmly.  She could not actually be certain if that was Petra speaking or her passenger.  She had never been one for the most humanitarian of solutions to begin with.

“Unless they start it,” Carmen modified.  “Or if they be committing the same barbarities the monks were at Folken.  Then you can cut them into tiny pieces.”

“At least someone understands me,” Petra sniffed haughtily.

“You worry me, you really do,” Athena said.

“Now that we have all been sufficiently traumatized, back to my point,” Tae said, pointedly not looking in Petra’s direction.  “For some reason, the wards here weakened to such a great extent that the prisoner was slowly leaking evil energies out.  The jailers were followers of Jadus.  It stands to reason that the prisoner has subtly been attacking the Jaden clergy.  The wards do not have to be completely down for someone of this power to find ways to warp mere mortals away from their holy teachings.”

“If the wards have been fixed, does that mean the priests have been as well?” Athena asked.

Odette shook her head.  “It would only mean no one else would fall under its sway.  The people already affected would not change.”

“So what needs be done?”

“One of the main rituals in solar religions is purification.  The symbolism in light driving out the dark is very powerful,” Petra said.  “If you really want to go through with this, Khorevail is going to need to test everyone they have, then send out peregrines to the other major cities and trickle down from there.”

Carmen whistled loudly.  “That would be a serious undertaking.  What would they do with anyone who fails?”

“That is not how a ritual of purification works,” Tae said.  “You do not ‘fail’ one.”

“You merely get locked up in a vault for someone else to try purifying again later,” Petra said with a snicker.

“That is not particularly funny,” Odette scolded.

“It’s the truth.  Don’t you remember those hall signs when we were there?  To records, to exultation chamber, to dormitory, to catacombs-”

“We get the picture,” Carmen interrupted.  “You didn’t mention vaults in there, so what are you getting at?”

“Well, this involves a little bit of nosiness on my part-”

“Obviously,” the sorceress said dryly.  “That is an understood in every story you tell.  Do skip the flavor text.”

Petra stuck her tongue out at her.  “They’ve got catacombs underneath the temple that they use to store artifacts the priests and sun-knights pick up on their crusades. The upper levels are for the things that can get loaned out- that’s why I saw it.  One of the crusaders was returning some holy sword.  It’s probably where Yseult got the orb of teleportation.”

“And the lower levels?”  Tae asked.

Petra scratched behind one ear.  “I couldn’t actually get in that far, they’ve got wards layered in there that could put the ones slapped up here to shame.”

“I sense a ‘but’ in there,” Odette said.

“Let’s just say there was a serious creepiness factor down there.  Not like here,” she added, “where it was basically aware of us and hated us.”

“Dormant,” Tae said.  “They must ward the evil artifacts they cannot cleanse and store them in the catacombs.”

“What be the odds something in there was to blame for this temple waking up?” Carmen asked.


End file.
